


Sufficiently Deep Magic (or: Futaba hacks the Metaverse)

by shai



Category: Persona 5
Genre: For Want of a Nail, Gen, and just a whole lot of meta, endgame spoilers, futaba/leet haxx otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-01-26 22:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12567168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shai/pseuds/shai
Summary: Is there any hacker worthy of the name who could use a mobile app to hop dimensions on the regular and not do her very best to reverse engineer it?Futaba sets out to learn how the Nav work, punches a hole through the fabric of reality, makes several of her friends question everything they thought they knew about their lives, and puts her newfound social skills to the test in situations they were almost certainly never intended for.(Set in late November, with spoilers through to the endgame.)





	1. Chapter 1

_11/25_

_Friday, after school_

 

 

Futaba knows she’s spent a while kicking gift horses in the mouth during her time as a shut-in, and she’s trying to break that self destructive streak now. She really is.

Being part of a team, a real team, is pretty sweet in a way she hadn’t realised she’d been missing. Hovering over the Metaverse and guiding her fellow thieves feels like playing a real-world RTS game, and that's totally her jam (and it's useful!). That whole facing her inner demons thing has turned out to be a pretty solid decision – she’s been outside again! She’s had several whole conversations with human beings she isn’t related to!

Corny as it might sound, she doesn’t want to do even the littlest thing that might endanger that.

The upshot of this is that The One And Only OG Medjed, scariest black hat hacker in Japan (if not the world), holds out almost a month before caving to the urge to dig into the Meta-Nav looking for what made it tick.

Eventually, the need to know wins out. Maybe it’s tempting fate a little bit to pull it apart and look for its secrets, but they’re trusting their lives to this thing every time they visited the Metaverse. When you look at it like that, isn’t it really more dangerous to let it stay a black box of unknowns?

The Phantom Thieves know Akechi has access to the Meta-Nav, and to the fake Medjed hacker collective. If Akechi’s masters are the ones building and running the app, and they might be able to track the thieves down from watching activity on it. Things could go south _real quick_.

To set her mind at ease, the day after they find Shido’s keywords, Futaba hooks her phone up to her PC with debug mode switched on and started tracing exactly what it was that made the Meta-Nav tick.

She clicked her fingers and rolled her wrists and set to work. 

 

> _> > hey Queen? got a minute to drop by after you’re done at the cafe?_
> 
> >> Sure. Be over in 15.

 

Makoto knocks on Futaba’s caution-taped door, surprised and a little flattered to be invited over. When she hears something indistinct-but-positive back from Futaba, the student council president makes her way through the clutter to perch on the side of the other girl’s bed.

Futaba’s at her desk, hunched over her keyboard, headphones over her ears. She doesn’t look around. There’s a single clear patch on the work surface, containing something hand-rigged with an exposed hard drive, a phone with its back off, and a set of wires leading up to a newly established monitor.

“Can I borrow your phone?”

“Uh, why?” Makoto said, louder than she would if she couldn’t hear the sounds of dubstep from the hacker’s headset.

“Yours looks like the oldest, that’s all.”

Makoto makes a faux-offended noise, by which she means: _explain_.

Futaba swivels round to face her, pulls the headphones down.

“Right, right, context: I’m on a quest. We pulled one over Akechi, and I want to make sure that sticks. To do that it’s not enough to have tricked him once, we need to git gud. We need  _op-sec,_ operational security. Y'know, the stuff that’s kept Medjed a mystery from every intelligence department in the world for years.”

That’s right, Futaba has some expertise in covert work the rest of them are missing.

“At the very least we need to find out one thing.” She holds one finger up, pauses, then dives straight into geeky high intensity mode before Makoto can take a guess: “How on earth is it possible for the Meta-Nav to use half a dozen different sets of consumer hardware to teleport us across realities? I know for a fact Android didn’t have a teleportation API now, let alone in version 4.2?”

Makoto nods, slowly, thinking it through. She doesn’t know what 30% of those words mean, but thinking back, she’d asked the same thing in less specific terms as well…

“It’s true, we don’t understand it at all. I remember asking about it back when infiltrated Kaneshiro’s palace, but over time – I guess it just became normal.”

Futaba steeples her fingers together on her raised knees, bright and animated in the backlight from her many screens. There’s something predatory in her expression.

“It’s not just that it’s surprising – if some research lab when off and secretly made a machine that could transport people into someone’s subconscious, that’d be surprising! Lots of people would read all the papers written on it and not get it, but it’d make sense that you could do wild stuff with cutting-edge tech.

“Doing something like that in a _mobile app_ that works on all three major phone operating systems, though, that’s not just unlikely, it’s totally 100% inconceivable. Those systems are known quantities. When you write software to run on them, it can only ask the phone system to do stuff that phones can do: display this picture, make these sounds, get this information off a web page and show the user, make a call, whatever. It chooses from a list of possible things, and _literally_ _travel to another dimension_ is absolutely not on that list.”

Makes sense.

“So, originally, my working theory was that the thing that let the Nav work was us; whatever kind of... ability? potential?… that lets us call a Persona powers the app. It seemed at first like the app worked off physical proxity – when it begins navigation, people nearby can gets drawn in. But we triggered it remotely when Sae was the one holding the phone, so something more complicated’s going on.”

“Akechi was there then though.”

“He wasn’t when I tested it with Sojiro, and he wasn’t when we deactivated it to bring her back.”

Maybe. Unless the cafe owner and her sister had that same quality that made the app work, that spirit of rebellion.

Futaba pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and leans forwards, eyes flashing with determination. “Either way, I’m gonna find out what’s going on: I’m Medjed, best hacker of the generation, and nothing committed to code can get past me.”

“Of course not.” Makoto says with a smile. “But do you… think it’s safe, trying to figure it out?”

By which she means: _your mother died for trying to hunt down these kind of secrets_.

Futaba looks down, kicks her feet.

“Don’t be…” Makoto doesn’t know what she’s trying to say. She struggles for a minute and comes up with: “I'm not saying you shouldn't. It’s not like anything about the Phantom Thieves is completely safe. What I mean is, when it comes to this, you’re the only one of us who can judge the risks, so we’re trusting you to thinking it over and tell us the best way forward, okay?”

“Right! As the thieves’ official hacker, I reckon it’s safer to investigate than it is to leave the app a mystery. If whoever runs it can track us, and if they’re working with Akechi, we’re giving ourselves away every time we take a job as thieves.”

Makoto hadn’t thought of that. How had none of them thought of that?

“And the other thing…” Futaba lowered her voice. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but if you ask Joker how he first got the app, he blanks on the question. I’ve asked three times now, and every time, he mumbles something vague then changes the topic. Then a few minutes later he doesn’t even remember what I asked!”

“When I first found out about the cognitive world, we had a conversation a bit like that.” Makoto remembers. “Morgana said something about the Nav: he said he didn’t really understand it, but he didn’t think we needed to worry about anyone accessing our data. At the time there was so much going on that I forgot about it, but it’s kind of unlike him, don’t you think, to be so trusting?”

Futaba nods, solemn in a way Makoto rarely sees her. “Morgana… knows things without remembering where he knows them from. He would never mean us any harm, I’m sure of that, but… you all saw what happened to me. How I thought of my mom. It’s not difficult for memories and beliefs to get distorted like that.

“So… I think I should look into this, and I think we should keep quiet about it until we have something to go on”

That, and Akira’s supposed death had everyone was on edge already. Makoto nods, hands over her phone.

 

* * *

 

_11/25_

_Friday, late evening_

Futaba isn’t used to anyone being in her room for more than 10 minutes. Or anyone being in her room at all, to be honest.

The thieves all pushing their way in when they first met her (god the memory makes her cringe so hard still) is pretty much the only time anyone other than Sojiro or Akira had visited for years.

Makoto makes for decent company, all things considered. She’d handed her phone over after extracting a promise to get it back in one piece, arranged herself neatly on the bed with a schoolbook and every time Futaba had twitched her attention off her screens the other girl’s focus had been steadily aimed bookwards.

Which was impressive, since it’d been… four and a half hours, now.

Auugh. So much time, so little tangible progress.

“This. Sucks.”

“Hm?” Makoto says after a moment. Not looking up from her book. Futaba can admire that kind of deep-focus nerd flow state, even if it does seem to be about some kind of schoolwork.

“It’s _bullshit_. This isn’t a real app. It doesn’t even look like a real piece of software even from a distance. I’m so offended.”

“What makes something not a real app?” Makoto asks, marking her place in the textbook and setting it and her notes aside.

“Imagine someone took a photo of your desktop, deleted all your icons, and set that as your new background. It looks the same, but does nothing. The app’s like that: it has an icon, it’s the right file format, but start poking at it and what you find out is that it couldn’t possibly ever work even a little bit. There’s no code to it, no logic, nothing that should actually be doing anything. It doesn’t make sense that we can even tell it names and have it react, let alone actually navigate us.”

“So you’re saying… “ Makoto chews on her lip, thinking it through, “You’re saying it looks like a smartphone app, but actually none of it is made with real computer programming?

“That’s right, newbie. Not just ‘hey, it’s sufficiently advanced technology so it looks like magic’. There’s literally no possible way it can be talking to the computer in your phone. The checksums for our two different versions of the apps are different, but the only file that’s different is a single image with a few tiny pixels different. Our phones are super-different, the same software literally wouldn’t work.”

The student council president marks her place in her book and scoots over closer to Futaba’s desk. “I see. But we knew it wouldn’t work according to real-world rules.”

“Right. But I was thinking the bits of it that show a map on our phone or accept input would be real, but there would be weirdness hidden behind that, and I could pull it apart a bit and figure out where that missing piece that’s gotta be magic was coming from.”

“I see, I think.”

“There’s ways to do that: traceroute, tcpdump, then haxx. I could sniff out how the ‘ok, send these kids to the metaverse’ trigger was being made and follow it across the internet and find out who’s behind it. But no, instead it’s just… nonsense from start to finish. I can’t trace it because it isn’t using the phone’s network interface. Not to load street maps of Tokyo, not to make any interesting third-party API calls, zip. Zilch. Nada.”

“Well, if only one image is different…What’s different about it?”

“Random noise, looks like. Minor corruption.”

“But from everything you’ve said, the thing powering it is cognitive pscience, not technology. I don’t think there’s such a thing as randomness here.”

Futaba makes a thoughtful noise, nods. Dives back into it for another hour of deep focus. She’s taken an image of Makoto’s phone, so it hardly even breaks her focus when the other girl notices her last train due soon and heads home.

 

* * *

 

_11/26_

_Saturday, morning_

 

Futaba probably shouldn’t have stayed up all night. She didn’t mean to, it was just that steganography turned out to be a pretty interesting field, and before she knew it, 5:30am had rolled around and bed didn’t really seem worth it.

They’re meeting in half an hour to infiltrate Shido’s palace, and she's twitching a little from how much coffee she’s consumed over the last 16 hours. Good life choices, Futaba makes them.

It'll probably be fine on the other side once she gets there – summoning her persona always pulls her into a state of calm and focus – but right now, it’s taking conscious effort to keep her eyes focused.

She’s getting somewhere now though though. Probably.

 

> _> > hey quick question Queen _
> 
> _> > what order did ppl get involved in this mess?_
> 
> >> Out of our group: Joker first. Then Ryuji and Ann, Yusuke, then me, then you, then Haru. Not sure how Akechi fits in. For all we know he could have been visiting the metaverse for years. 

 

Futaba makes a face, scribbling out a couple of things on the rare page of scrawled-on-paper notes.

 

> >> Why?
> 
> _> > leet hax._
> 
> >> No, really. Why?
> 
> _> > specifically that difference between the our versions of the app. diffs of the img makes it look like numerals. Joker’s 0, I’m IX, you’re II. _
> 
> _> > tryin to pin down what that could be._
> 
> >> IX makes it seem like roman numerals. That’d be 9, but as far as we know, there aren’t 9 people who can enter the Metaverse.
> 
> >> Unless there’s multiple people acting as “Black Mask”.
> 
> _> > it’d be out of order anyway. you were like the fifth person to join right? idek. could be nothing, could be they suck at semantic versioning._

 

* * *

 

_11/27_

_Sunday,_ _morning_

 

She’d survived the palace trip, but by hour four of the stupid fancy ship and its the stupid looped classical music and droning loudspeaker announcements, she’d been regretting her life choices something fierce.

Futaba crashes the second they got back, then dives back into research when she wakes up at 4am.

Whatever. Circadian rhythms are for the weak, and Yusuke had twisted his ankle in a nasty fall that even diarahan hadn’t put totally right, so they’d be taking today off the infiltration to let him recover.

Around ten am, the siren song of breakfast lured her out of her increasingly dead-ended research binge enough to pull on a hoodie and head over to LeBlanc. Having to consolidate all the open tabs into a ‘follow these up’ subset small enough to pass over to her laptop hurt, but sometimes you had to weigh up your beautiful dual-screen monitor, fibre-connected setup against the selfless impulse to go keep your supposedly-dead best friend slash pseudo-sibling company.

And to, y’know, eat.

Akira’s made the interesting choice to spend his time as an undercover officially dead person working in the cafe everyone knows he works at, so Futaba pulls up a stool at the counter.

“Morning gremlin.”

Since the other half of his greeting comes in the form of coffee and curry, she'll allow it. As zombie siblings go, he’s not the worst.

She pokes him in mock-retaliation at the name, but fails her will save against delicious breakfast curry and gives up on the squabbling when he dodges and uses his longer reach to bop her on the head.

By the time she’s finished the curry and moved onto the coffee phase of the meal, he’s prepped the vegetables for a new batch and drifted back towards her, leaning on the counter and tapping a pen against an order form of some kind.

“Hey, Futaba.”

She looks up. He's fidgeting with his hair, hesitant.

“I’m sorry. I promised to help you get back to the outside world, but we might have to put that on pause while I lie low.”

“Geez, don’t say that! You could have died, no talking about it as if it’s only important because of how it affects me!”

He blinks, in that just slightly goofy way he does when he isn’t sure how to react to something. Futaba normally finds it endearing, when it doesn’t mean ‘what, you care if I live or die?’.

“Hey, don’t look so surprised,” She says, voice low. “I’m just glad you’re safe, OK? You don’t need to help me advance the main storyline of Futaba Getting Her Shit Together to be one of my important people.”

He gives her a sheepish smile.

“I mean it, okay?”

He meets her eyes, nods. Akira-speak for ‘message-received’.

Futaba gives him a thumbs up, then retreats to the booth nearest the stairs, quota of emotional conversations used up until lunchtime.

Flipping her laptop open, she pings Makoto on chat.

 

> _> > yo, i grabbed the others’ copies of the app. Ann – VI, Haru – III, Ryuji – VII. u see a connection? i can’t, wtf._
> 
> >> Sorry, I’ve got nothing. Maybe it’s a red herring after all.
> 
> _> > yeh. could just be build number, and they made one build per model of phone but some never got used… but tbh i don’t buy it_
> 
> >> I admit I don’t really understand what that means, but that sound more like ‘real life’ computer logic than we’d expect?
> 
> _> > it kinda does. siiiiigh -_-''_

 

After lunch, Sojiro takes over the shop and Akira ventures off to the outside world in his brilliant disguide: a really generic hoodie.

Futaba gives up on getting any more investigating done on her teeny-tiny laptop screen and sat playing mindless clicky games while her mind turns the problem over and over and over again, looking for new angles. By the time an annoyingly chatty couple drove her back out to her bedroom, something a bit like a plan has pulled itself together in her mind.

A couple of quick tests, and…

 

> _> > hey prez, I have an idea._
> 
> >> Tell me more

 

Wow, no punctuation? She must be excited.

 

> _> > the ‘app’ partly works by doing what we believe it will do – except things like keyword work consistently. at first i wondered if it was based on us understanding our target well enough and holding that understanding in our mind, but that couldn’t possibly explain small fry in Mementos, or how saying stuff at random can work sometimes._
> 
> _> > so… are they some kind completely objective/predictable Metaverse GPS coordinates that get transmitted to Metaverse Google Maps? nnnnope don’t think so, there’s no way those are efficient enough unique identifiers to cover the whole of japan. _
> 
> _> > _ _it must be referring back to an external lookup table. a database, effectively._
> 
> >> I’m not sure where you’re going with this.

 

Futaba’s hands are a bit shaky as she types a reply.

 

> _> > I think I can get us to the place the app came from._

 

* * *

 

“It’s not all that complicated, but it’s twisty logic. Play close attention.” Futaba starts talking as soon as Makoto sits down. The hacker is on edge, feet tapping restlessly.

“I pulled apart a version of the app by _believing I could hack it_. It’s driven by cognition, so it’s vulnerable to being attacked with cognition. Like I said, I was wondering, how did it work – is it reading our mind and using our mental picture of the target to locate them in the cognitive world? It can’t be that simple, or you wouldn’t be able to check that a target exists in Mementos just by knowing the name.

“So because of that, the Nav must have a database of available targets in it somewhere, and it’s gotta take input and looks it up against that database. I tried, and I can’t enumerate the contents of that database, but I could get one thing: _its default value._ ”

“I… see.” Makoto said slowly. “But why do you think the default would be something that’s useful to us?”

“When we use our personas, it takes energy,” Futaba says. “And just existing in a palace takes at least a little bit of conscious effort. So isn’t it weird that using the app doesn’t, even though it must cost energy to transport us? I don’t know for sure, but I was pretty certain that it’s hooked up to a place of origin, and that’s what’s powering it, and that’s where whatever the mechanism to let it find targets is. And when I recompiled it with all its debug flags on… that place, that default, is called _origin._ ”

It takes Makoto a second, and then her eyes widen. “You mean… we can navigate to the place that the app was created?”

"Or maybe the place that powers it. Either way, a place that'll have some answers."

Futaba gestures Makoto over to her desk chair and pulls up the latest debug version on her screen. She tilts her head back to look up at the other girl, eyes gleaming with triumph in the green light from her screens.

“Not on your copy of the app… but on this one, we can.”

She taps in the text command to start navigation, then pulls the mike of the headphones around her neck up to her face and speaks a single word: “Origin.”

The hacked app speaks out loud and prints to the screen at the same time: _Candidate found._

Futaba turns, grinning, expression a little bit terrifying. Makoto imagines it’s how she’d look calling down an all-out attack on a fallen foe.

“What next?” She asks, voice low and serious. “We have a rule: we only go after a target if we’re in unanimous agreement. But in this case, we’re concerned our leader and Morgana might… not be able to assess things objectively.”

Futaba scratches her head, laughing a little. “It sounds stupid, but I didn’t even think that far. I’ve found a hit on the app, but we don’t know at all what’s waiting on the other side.”

Makoto nods, but she’s sure she looks troubled. “Of the four palaces I’ve visited - Kaneshiro’s, yours, Okumura-san’s and my sister’s – none of those were a risk until we pushed forward into secure areas. But this location may be more like Mementos, or like something else entirely. It’s hard to say what the consequences will be.”

“Mementos is safe, though, until you cross the ticket gates.”

“Hm… I don’t like acting without the whole team, but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable risk to take a look without bringing Morgana and Akira in.”

“What about the others?” Futaba asks. “I’ll be here for support, but if we do get jumped the second we arrive, there’s only so much I can do. I mean, this might not even work as is. But. If it does.”

“It’s a valid concern… But everyone’s still shaken up after Akechi, and I don’t want to divide the team’s attention from Shido.”

“You think we should wait?”

“I...” Makoto wants to get up and pace around the room. There’s bags of trash and all kinds of computer gear and junk on the floor though, so she folds her arms instead, trying to think it through. “I don’t want to wait. I’m worried. If your worst case scenario is right and the people behind the app are the same ones using Akechi to sabotage the thieves, then our infiltration against Shido will be when they close the jaws of their trap.”

Futaba nods. “Yeah. I think we need to know. So let’s jump in, grab some scans, and all the while stay on our toes ready to run right away again.”

Makoto nods, doing her best to seem calm, like the dependable second-in-command of the Phantom Thieves she should be.

She’s inwardly very very worried that she’s making the same mistake she did with Kaneshiro – jumping in too early, showing their hand when they don’t have to.

They do need information though. Akira has some connection to the app and its makers that he seems literally unable to explain. She trusts that he would never knowingly harm them, but she doesn’t trust that he’d spot a trap that’s been disguised from him by cognition itself. The same for Morgana: the not-cat is an ally and they’d have been lost without him, but they have no way to understand the mysteries in Morgana’s past, and what they don’t know absolutely could hurt them.

So she checks her satchel still has its little stock of healing Metaverse items, nods her readiness to Futaba, and tamps down her nerves as the younger girl moves forward to activate the hacked version of the app.

“ _Beginning navigation...”_

The voice is familiar, and the world distorting around them into red and black. But then everything shivers, shakes, and breaks up into static.

The space that reforms around them is no part of cognitive Tokyo that Makoto has ever seen. They’re standing on a huge chunk of rock over an endless void sparkling with stars. The sky – or is it the horizon? – shines a deep blue like the moments before sunset.

A series of beautifully carved stone doorframes stand all around them, all angled at odds with one another, and all without doors and leading nowhere.

The one nearest Makoto is cracked: the directionless blue light shines right through the stone.

“Shit, spooky.” Futaba says. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but...”

“Not this, right?” Makoto asks, turning slowly on her heel. The rock surface they’re standing on is flat and even. It’s not very large, several hundred meters all around, and it does not seem to connect to anything else.

Futaba hurries to peer at something and Makoto turns to keep her in sight, and notices… a desk? No, a table: it’s round, more of a coffee table than a work surface. There’s an old looking book on it, and Futaba reaches one hand out.

“Step back!”

A voice rings through the eerie space comes from the other side of the table: high, clear, female. Makoto is absolutely certain the two thieves were the only people on this rock a second ago, but there the speaker is in front of them: a woman in blue, with long hair so pale it looks white.

Futaba does step back, so fast she trips. Makoto moves in to stand between the team navigator and the stranger. She’s still wearing her school uniform, and suddenly she wants the comfort of her brass knuckles.

“I do not believe you have been invited here.” The stranger’s voice is level, but icy. “Even if you were a guest of this place, the Compendium is not for your eyes.”

She has one elegant hand raised, a card held between two fingers like a dart. Something about the way she’s standing makes it seems as deadly a weapon as any of Haru’s heavy artillery.

Makoto wants to take another step back from the table, but Futaba’s huddled at her back, one hand locked around her upper arm. Options limited thus, she bows.

“… We… humbly apologise for our intrusion.” She says in her best speaking-to-authority-figures voice: “We did not intend any disrespect. To be honest, I’m not even sure where we are.”

With the threat to her book softened, the woman looks around. Makoto stares. She’s beautiful in an almost unearthly way, with eyes that look almost amber, a shade darker than the fierce yellow of the Metaverse’s Palace rulers.

“What has happened here?” She wonders. “The Room has fallen out of its current state into a form like this sometimes before in times of turmoil, but not for some years now. And for it to call me back when I have passed my duties on to another…”

She shakes her head and takes a seat at the bare stone table, laying one hand on the book. “Please, take a seat and tell me how you came here. I am Margaret, a guardian of this place.”

As she invites them to sit, Makoto realises there are two simple chairs on their side of the table. She hasn't seen anything change, but she’s fairly sure they hadn’t been there a second ago.

Makoto has stepped forward to sit, responding to the invitation without really thinking. Futaba doesn't move.

“Hey, we’re here looking for the person who made this app” - the hacker says, holding her phone out with it open - “it kind of seems like they’re messing with the head of a friend of ours. The thing you did just now sure reminds me of that.”

“The thing…?” the stranger blinks. “Ah, the chairs. I did not mean to cause you alarm. It is the nature of this place to be shaped by the will of its inhabitants.”

Futaba looks over at Makoto for reassurance, wary but willing to trust her lead. Makoto feels warm at the show of trust. They’re here to gather information, so it makes sense to talk: she takes a seat in this strange island in the middle of a void and introduces herself.

“I'm Makoto Niijima. My ally is called Futaba. As I said, we didn’t mean to intrude on your space. We’re investigating things we don’t really understand, we might have – misstepped, I think.”

Margaret nods, gestures for her to continue.

“We’re following a trail of clues about something that’s very important to us. It’s a long story, but basically, a person we don’t know gave us the ability to enter a place called the Metaverse.”

She looks for recognition in Margaret’s eyes, and thinks she sees it.

“We don’t know who would do that, and all the people in Tokyo who know about that place are dangerous: they killed Futaba’s mother, and they’ve been manipulating our group, and using that world to kill people and to rig an election. So we came here to look for answers: we want to know who got us involved in the first place, and why.”

“I see.” Margaret says slowly. “You took a greater risk than you realise, coming here. For my sister and the one who presides over this place to have both left their their posts, I fear something is truly wrong. I will need answers of my own.”

“If you’d… moved on from this place, how did you know to come back?” Makoto asks.

Margaret taps two fingers on the leather-bound book in front of her. “I was created to rule over power: the power of this book, and of this place. As times come and go, I may cede my duties to another, but I will always be connected to it.”

“Huhhh.” Futaba says, not as quietly as she probably thinks.

Margaret smiles, just a tiny bit, and stands. “By its very nature, the room is a dialogue – between humans and their reflections, or between travellers and their guides. So unexpected visitors as you are, you could not be here without me.”

“You’re... hanging a mirror on the wall of Plato’s cave, huh?” Makoto asks. She’d run out of published cognitive psience to read pretty quickly, so she's been reading a lot of philosophy lately.

Futaba, whose taste runs more to fresh memes than elaborate metaphors from thousands of years ago, doesn’t mind at all when Margaret skips straight past that conversational gambit.

“Right now, I’m interested in finding where the master of this room has gone.” (what _room_ , Futaba thinks.) “Tell me, of the group of friends you came to defend, is there one of them who learned of this other world first and brought the rest of you into this other world?”

“… Kinda, yeah.” Futaba admits.

“I should be able to use this book to understand a little about how they gained that power. Would you bring that person to mind?”

Makoto frowns, confused by the question. Futaba actually does think of Akira before she realises she’s doing it: how normally it’s him who pulls her out of her own private bubble back into the world, and how pleased she’d been this morning to flip his worry around and remind him she cared about him, too.

She smiles a little at the thought, then realises Margaret is staring straight at her. A look of deep, unguarded fondness crosses her otherwise uncannily calm face, and all of a sudden Futaba's 1000% sure that this scary sorceress lady from another dimension has just read her inner thoughts on the matter of one Akira Kurusu, pseudo-brother and Phantom Thief extraordinaire.

She glares and ducks behind Makoto, as having a human shield would be able to stop businesswoman-elf-looking strangers using their freaky mind-reading powers on her. Unlikely, she admits. Maybe makarakarn?

“Want to explain what you just did?” Makoto asks, in an icy-dangerous voice to match Margaret's. She’s also a pretty great friend, Futaba thinks, for this and for dealing with about ten hours of Futaba's hacker gremlin bullshit over the last week.

Margaret doesn’t seem to be listening even a little bit: the blond witch-lady is holding her book in front of her, chest height. Her eyes are distant, and there’s suddenly an air of purpose, almost ritual, even in the way she’s standing. The air around her feels charged.

Futaba’s hands tighten on the back of Makoto’s school jacket, but Margaret ignores them.

She turns away to look at a doorway, then shuts the book, tucks it under an arm. Steps over to stand directly in front of the opening, reaches out to lay one hand against the space where a door would be. A ripple of blue spreads out from her fingertips, waves rolling out to the edges of the doorframe.

The air in the empty doorway shimmers blue for a moment, then the colours fade back into nothingness.

Futaba feels a shiver go down her spine. It’s a bit weird how scary it is actually: you’d think after spending at least one evening a week running around another dimension making things explode or catch fire with the power of their inner selves, the novelty of magic stuff happening would wear off. There’s something about Margaret’s slow, solemn motions that seems more _real_ than the abilities their personas give them in the Metaverse.

“Hm.” Margaret shakes her head. Looks back over her shoulder at them. “I apologise, Sakura-san. I will not be able to learn any more about the situation from this place. May I accompany the two of you back to your world?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Oh my god how does anyone write persona fic, the canon is so sprawling and huge)
> 
> So, in the conversation after Makoto first visits Kaneshiro’s palace, when she asks about the origins of the app, you get this dialogue option:
> 
> > A long nosed man...
> 
> Pick that and you get:
> 
> Interior monologue: I want to tell her the truth, but it's tough to explain that Igor has been sending out the app.  
> Morgana: "... I don't fully understand, but I don't think we have to worry about people accessing our data"  
> Morgana: "From what I can tell, this app is incredibly special. It wasn't made by any ordinary means."
> 
> Sure, that sounds legit Morgana. Let’s all take that 100% at face value.
> 
> So AS SOON as we learn Futaba’s been bugging LeBlanc, I went ‘oh my god I really really want to write Futaba trying to reverse engineer the app and being like 'WTF this is literally just magic’.
> 
> But then I kept playing the game, and as plot kept happening, that story-concept went from "lol that'd be charming and silly" the ~25k words of sprawling for-want-of-a-nail AU it... now is......


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again Morgana's strong feelings about sleep being the only acceptable post-palace-infiltration activity get ignored.

_11/27_  
_Sunday, late afternoon_

It’s convenient that Futaba’s door is already covered in hazard tape and Keep Out signs, because there is now a genuine bona fide hazard inside it. Hanging over her arduino-driven hardware-hacking phone emulator is a glowing blue rift in reality. Arcs of something that crackles like electricity jump off it every now and then, dancing over the case of her gaming PC in a way that makes wonder if powering down all her electronics before triggering the app had really been enough of a precaution.

The cabinet with her main server, her bitcoin mining rigs, and her networking gear is a few feet away at least. Hopefully that’s far enough to be clear. Her laptop’s on her bed; might be in danger, but everything on it’s backed up.

What if the weirdass portal’s radioactive, though?

The hacker edges around the hole in reality on her knees to peer behind her desk. Seems like there’s clearance to get past the… interdimensional portal… to the socket on the wall. She really hopes cutting power to the app will make it go away. Futaba tries not to be any more of a disappointment to her adopted dad than she already is: she works hard to make sure what Sojiro hears about her hacking is only ever enough to make him raise an eyebrow and grump, not so much he actually worries. It’d be stressful and embarrassing if they had to move house because she’d broken the fabric of time and space in her bedroom.

As she stands up from where she’s crawled under the desk to power down the gaming machine, Futaba gets an abrupt visual reminder of the other thing that’s very wrong about the situation: the smartly-dressed witch lady who has followed them home.

Margaret is glancing around with mild interest. One of her heeled feet is resting on a drift of sweet wrappers; it’s unclear if she’s noticed, since her facial expression hasn’t changed at all whether she’s looking at the eight bags of garbage heaped in front of her wardrobe or the row of college-grade textbooks sat next to her manga collection.

Futaba has spent maybe twenty minutes with this woman so far total, but she feels like it's a safe bet that Margaret would keep that exact same expression if she stepped outside and found herself looking down on the Grand Canyon.

The normal-person reaction to this situation would have been to freak out about the giant gap in reality clipping through her desk, then being grateful to have an apparently helpful supernatural stranger around to help with it. But nope. Now Futaba’s fully registered _'shit, someone who isn’t a phantom thief or my adopted dad is in my room'_ , her brain trips and falls straight into a social anxiety panic spiral.

Her eyes stay glued to the blond woman (Margaret steps carefully over to inspect her bookshelf). A small part of her brain is telling her she should really have thought to tidy before attempting to go dimension-hopping. The rest of her keeps switching between frantic mental giggling at the fact that some magic woman from another dimension is perusing her shelf of manga and yelling at her to figure out what a person with social skills would do in this situation.

Tough luck, subconscious: someone with functioning social skills would not have blackmailed their father’s tenant into stealing their heart, and so they wouldn't ever have to answer this question.

Eh, their loss. Having a persona and navigating in the Metaverse is awesome.

“So uh.” Makoto says, who’s been busy staring into the void. Apparently this is long enough for her to establish it isn’t fading out and that it wasn’t an optical after-effect of the journey. “What is that?”

Seems like they’ve all been going on their own individual little journeys of discovery, huh.

“Normally, it would be a door to the place I come from.” Margaret says, turning back to them. “The Velvet Room. But for there to be a door, there must be a room on the other side – and as you saw, the space on the other side is raw, unfocused. Its essential nature is the same, but it is unformed, and so any entrance to it will be unstable.”

Futaba really wants to go and read all about quantum mechanics so she can think of good questions to ask. Makoto scratches her head, more comfortable thinking it through out loud than Futaba is.

“So the place you’re from, this…. Velvet Room… it’s a cognitive world, but different from the place we know, the Metaverse?”

“It’s not a world. It would be more accurate to call it a corner of a bigger reality. Think of the place you visited as an island, standing tall above the sea of souls. The place I call the Velvet Room is like a lighthouse built on top of that island, able to guide travellers through their journey… but now, it is missing. Something has torn it down. Or worse, uprooted it and taken it away entirely.”

She raises her head, her mass of white-blonde curls framing eyes that shine with determination: “Rest assured. I will find the culprit and show them it was their mistake to challenge us.”

* * *

The children are a little scared of her, Margaret can tell. But they’re also brave, and good-natured, and independent-minded. As loyal as they are to the boy whose footsteps they’re tracking beyond reality, they are also canny enough to be watching out for the jaws of the trap he’s in.

The dark-haired one, Niijima, asks how she means to catch the culprit. Margaret thinks for a moment, then calls the Compendium back into her hands and sets in her mind the impressions Sakura had shown her of this trickster boy these two know. She knows little about him – she didn’t ask his name, nor can she guess what form the Velvet Room would shape itself into around him – but the girl’s impression of him had been vivid enough to guide her.

A moment’s focus, and she feels the pages of the compendium write themselves under her hands, and sees a faint spider’s web of lines draw themselves around the neighbourhood.

There: the Priestess. The Hermit. The roles they take in one another’s journeys will shift over time, but the bonds between them will stay strong.

Margaret smiles, a little wistful. Thinking back on another journey, another set of brave adventuring children on the cusp of adulthood.

“She’s gonna stare into space, but look really cool doing it,” Sakura whispers, perfectly audible despite the hand in front of her mouth.

“Dignified. She looks dignified.” Niijima corrects her. “Maybe even regal.”

“Eh, both those things.” Then, quieter: “Man, d’you reckon I’ll look that ever cool and collected?”

Niijima’s eyes dance with amusement. Margaret keeps her gaze on the middle distance, and informs Sakura: “If you practice hard every day, one day you can look just as mysterious as me.”

The half second it takes them both to be sure she’s actually joking is deeply satisfying. She shuts the book in her hands, then sends it back to a space between realities.

“To answer your question: I have a sister who might know more about these events. My first step will be to find her.”

Niijima nods. “Okay, uh, nice. It was good to meet you Margaret-san. Let us know how it goes!”

Margaret nods. “I will let you know what I find out.”

And with that, she turns to face the blue portal, then vanishes into the air as if she’d stepped through it.

* * *

Makoto stares at Futaba and Futaba stares back. For a moment, they’re both at a complete loss for words.

“Well...” Futaba says, “that sure was something?”

Before she knows it, all Makoto’s nervous tension dissolves into giggling.

They pick themselves up eventually: Futaba powers down the hacked Meta-Nav app, and to their intense relief the rift in reality disappears along with it.

Makoto perches on the other girl’s bed with a notebook, writing down every detail she can think of about the journey they took and the conversations they had.

Futaba comes to perch next to her. The hacker is still twitchy with leftover panicked energy, but now she's channelling it into the drive and enthusiasm she normally keeps for computer-related mischief. Her chin’s nearly resting on Makoto’s shoulder, closer than she’ll normally get to anyone other than Akira.

“I genuinely can’t believe that worked. We hacked our way to another universe!!”

“You hacked our way there. Nice work, Oracle.”

“Nah. Team effort. You pointed out I was looking for real-world logic, not thinking of the app as something that works on cognition.”

That’s… surprisingly generous of her. Makoto is touched.

“So whatcha writing? What did we learn?”

Makoto’s page of conclusions still feels bare:

> 1\. The app is linked to ‘an island’ on the ‘sea of souls’  
>  2\. There should be a metaphorical ‘lighthouse’ there (M: “the Velvet Room”) - it’s some kind of tool to teach humans how to interact w cognitive world  
>  3\. This place has been disrupted/damaged, not clear when this happened  
>  4\. It should have guardians*, but they are missing/dormant? Us intruding called the guardian “Margaret” back  
>  \- can we assume others intruding to make the app would have had the same effect?  
>  6\. M did not recognise the app, does not recognise Akira. But not surprised at the thought of this place used to meddle this way.  
>  Notes on Margaret:  
>  * looking for “sister”. Literal sister?  
>  * Can teleport or at least instantly return to the dimension  
>  * Learned about Akira from Futaba’s mind?? with magic book??  
>  * Possibly messed w/ Akira’s mind (but this might be whoever’s disrupted their dimension) (and she didn’t seem to know him) 

Futaba looks thoughtful.

“Margaret-san was expecting two people to be there. A ‘sister’, and ‘the one who rules this place’. The master.”

Makoto notes it down. She’s got a lot written down here, but it all feels vague. All of a sudden, she wants Ann in on this with her fierce sense of purpose. She wants Akira’s steadiness, Morgana’s sense of direction and knowledge of the Metaverse. Even Ryuji, jumping around between ideas with a sheer exuberance that makes the whole team brighter.

She feels lonely, all of a sudden, even though in reality having even one friend in on her plans is still a pretty rare thing. Makoto leans back against the wall, shutting her eyes for a minute.

“Futaba… what do we even do from here? Do we trust her? Do we get the others involved?”

She can hear Futaba drumming her fingers on her knees.

“I didn’t scan the place properly – I need Prometheus for that – but Margaret felt scary strong. I mean seriously endgame-final-boss-level-scary, I think she could flatten us even if we had the whole team. So, I’ll level with you, I dunno that we’ve got many options other than waiting to see what she does. But she seems more the quest-giving mentor kind of NPC than the secretly evil type. She doesn’t seem like the kind who’d chase her prey in circles for her own amusement.”

“I wish we hadn’t gotten the attention of someone that dangerous without the others knowing. We were only trying to get the lay of the land, but it feels like we’ve gone against the unanimous decision rule.”

“… Yeah.” Futaba sounds a little sullen.

“It’s done now.” Makoto says. She hadn’t meant it as an accusation. “But I wonder if we ought to talk to Morgana at least, see if he’s ever heard of this place.”

“Yeah, probably. Not tonight.”

* * *

_11/29_

_Tuesday, after school_

After the school-goers amongst them get freed from their educational prison the next day, it’s back to Shido’s horrible fancy-schmancy cruise ship palace. They’re looking for a creep by the cognitive poolside. Futaba feels different about the ship-palace today, now it’s sunk in that there are a whole bunch of other other realities as well as this one where they just about have the rules more or less figured out.

Can they just hack through this palace like she did the app? If the fighters in the group can make toy guns real just by believing, why wouldn’t that work?

But the Palace couldn’t feel more different than the place she and Makoto visited yesterday – the super-vivid parody-of-reality of someone’s cognitive world set against the quiet, eerie landscape Margaret comes from.

How do the two places match up? Are they even related at all? There are clues they are: shadows talk about remembering that they come from the ‘sea of souls’ when Joker talks them into coming and hanging out in his brain.

If Palaces are shaped by Palace rulers, and Mementos by humanity as a whole, is Margaret’s land shaped by someone with a much more poetic sense of the world around them? Or is it blank like an uninitialised variable, nothing but random bytes of data making static in empty space. It could almost be, but the island full of the empty doorframes must be part of someone’s cognition.

Is that reality overlaid on this one – ?

“Ey, Oracle!” Ryuji’s voice cuts through her thoughts, and she realises she’s missed a whole conversation. Where were they? “I’ve got a plan. Can you help us find a way into that changing room over there?”

… The plan turns out to be ‘distract the nobleman with swimwear until he helps’, and it works about as well as any plan that relies on the Phantom Thieves’ acting skills ever does. One day Futaba will learn not to offer Ryuji help without caveats.

After that, they find their way into a deeply weird rat maze and things go even further downhill. Those hacking-into-palace skills can’t happen soon enough; Futaba is going to learn to clip through cognitive walls if it kills her. She’s going to become the world’s first metaverse speedrunner.

Just as soon as she can figure out to use a keyboard as a rat.

* * *

Margaret doesn’t know where her sister lives now, nor what she does with her time. They meet every year or so, but it’s rarely planned in advance. Normally Elizabeth appears next to Margaret as the older sister wanders the sea of souls, then says with that ever-so-human grin on her face that she’s found somewhere exceptional, that her sister absolutely must come and see it with her.

There is a reason only one of them tends to initiate these meetings: Elizabeth has spent most of the time since she left the Room not wanting to be found. Margaret does not always understand her sister’s wishes, but she does her best to respect them.

She doesn’t think Elizabeth would mind being looked for this time. Of any Resident of the Room other than their master, Elizabeth understands the most about how the fabric of reality works, and who could have destroyed or sealed or hidden the Velvet Room.

And. Well. Margaret is not sure how to seek her younger sister out, but she does knows one place that the other woman will be watching.

She steps between dimensions and appears in pitch blackness at the foot of a great door.

She bows to pay her respects to a man she never met, then turns away from him and looks around. She suspects her sister will be on the lookout for any unusual patterns of energy in this place, so it should just be a matter of making a scene, but – she turns, eyes catching a glimmer of movement – while she’s here, why not show a little goodwill?

The nascent form of Erebus is weak. It falls quickly in the face of her almighty attacks. Job done, Margaret kicks her heels off and sits quietly in seiza, contemplating this strange corner of reality and the boy left to guard it. It is not an entirely peaceful moment: there are too many questions hanging over her, and she finds herself growing impatient.

She cannot wait her indefinitely. Hopefully her actions will draw Elizabeth back soon. Certainly it will catch her attention: there are not many in the world who could challenge even a very young Erebus.

Margaret produces a pen and paper, and writes a few quick lines:

 

> _Sister,_
> 
> _I hope your journey goes well._
> 
> _Something unsettling has happened to our Master and the Room. I will investigate, but I would be grateful to have your eyes on this too._
> 
> _You will find me in Yongen-Jaya in Tokyo, where there are a group of persona-users._
> 
> _M._

* * *

 

They made good progress today. They’ve got three of the letters of introduction they need, they’ve figured out how the puzzles in Shido’s cruise ship work, and learned most of the weaknesses of the shadows that guard it.

Akira rolls his shoulders, adjusts the hoodie he’s wearing to make sure it covers his hair, and sets off up the stairs from Yongen-Jaya subway station back to LeBlanc, piecing together a mental list of the loot they gathered and where to sell it on.

Akechi shouldn’t have any reason to show up at the cafe any more, and Akira hopes to hell he won’t, but the detective can be unpredictable – they shouldn’t count on that keeping him away. The allegedly-dead leader of the Phantom Thieves is on high alert still, he approaches slowly and takes a casual look through the window before entering.

Sojiro’s behind the bar, of course, but – he's talking to someone at the bar, just one seat off from the stool he still thinks of as Akechi’s. A woman, pale hair in a bob cut, wearing a smart green and white sleeveless top, it’s clear even just seeing her from the back that her attention’s completely focused on Sojiro, who is gesturing with the kind of good humour it had taken weeks for Akira to see.

Sojiro calls out a greeting when he comes in, then leans on the counter. “Hey, kid. This one says she’s looking for her missing sister. Kinda sounded like something you and your bunch of troublemakers might know about.”

The woman turns around with a smile. He’d assumed her hair was dyed, but her eyebrows match perfectly… just like they match the amber-yellow of her eyes.

Akira is normally pretty good at tamping down knee-jerk reactions, so when he does a massive full-body flinch Morgana makes a surprised sound and pokes his head up to see the source of the commotion; the second he does, he hisses in shock and painfully clambers his way up Akira’s arm to perch with two paws on each of his human’s shoulders, uncharacteristically silent.

“Huh…” Sojiro scratches his head. “Haven’t seen the cat that spooked for a long time. C’mon, she’s a paying customer. And one that cares about the art of coffee, at that!”

Morgana’s claws are sunk into his collarbones.

“Mona?” Akira asks in an undertone. Gears are turning in his head: her eyes don’t have an eerie glow like the Palace Rulers or shadow selves of Mementos.

“I… I know her. Not her, but… there’s something…”

“My apologies for catching you both off guard.” She steps out from behind the counter, bows formally. “My name is Elizabeth. My sister came to visit here recently, and she found something alarming enough that she set off looking for me urgently. Presumably not this excellent coffee!”

“Your… sister?” Akira asks. Ignoring the fact that he’s 99% sure she understood the talking cat.

“Didn’t you meet her? Margaret.” Then, sing-song. “Resident of a place between dream and reality, mind and matter.”

Sojiro gives her a look of slight betrayal. Akira knows he's still holding out hope that his ward will one day meet a normal person in Tokyo and stop coming home with stories about other dimensions or life-or-death plans relying on cognitive doubles.

“I… don’t think I did, no. Only Caroline and Justine.”

Her eyes go sharp at this. On his shoulder, Morgana crackles with tension.

“Well, in any case” Sojiro interrupts. “I was thinking I’d lock up soon. Did you get dinner already, kid?”

What he’s really asking is: can you two handle this?

Akira shrugs a little, meaning that it’s OK. If things get out of hand, it won’t be something that Sojiro can help with.

Also, Sojiro’s still in shock at Akechi’s assassination attempt. There’s a tidal wave of weird and confusing stuff about to crash down in this conversation, and Akira (who has long since abandoned hope that his life is going to make any sense in the foreseeable future) thinks it’s nice that Sojiro has a last few shreds of normality left available to him.

“Not yet. E- Elizabeth-san, would you like to join me?”

“Oh!” She looks genuinely surprised by the offer, excited in a way he’s never seen the twin wardens. “Curry is this shop’s speciality, is that right? Yes, I’d very much like to experience it.”

And so Akira promises to close up the shop, waves goodbye to Sojiro, and serves up two plates of curry. 

 

> _> > you didn’t hear anything from Margaret-san, did you?_  
>  >> Nothing yet, but we didn’t exchange contact details with her.  
>  >> I don’t think we’ll know what’s going on until she comes back in person.

Elizabeth is dressed like some kind of slightly quirky businesswoman, and unlike the wardens, not wearing even a single trace of blue. She seems to know a more about how the world works than Caroline and Justine, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that her similarities to the two younger girls go beyond their looks: she eats LeBlanc’s signature dish with meticulous, intense focus, as if she expects this to be her last chance to ever taste curry.

Akira himself has done a lot of running, sneaking and fighting since the last snack they stopped for in a safe room, and he happily enough leaves conversation aside so he can eat and Elizabeth can experience some kind of almost-religious Food Epiphany.

Morgana paces around the back of Akira’s booth seat, then jumps down the second he pushes his plate aside to sit just close enough to feel the body heat of his human.

Weird. Normally that kind of cat-like affection only comes out when he’s very sleepy indeed. Still, if she has something to do with Morgana’s memories, it makes sense: nothing shakes their guide up more than a reminder of the gaps in his knowledge about himself.

He waits until she’s done eating to ask: “Elizabeth-san, do you know how Morgana came to lose his memories?”

Elizabeth rests her chin on her hand, looking unblinkingly at Morgana.

“No. But you are a creation of the Velvet Room.”

Morgana stares back, unblinking. He must be very upset to be so still.

“A creation?” Akira repeats. “What does that mean?”

Morgana jumps up onto the table, tail swishing in distress. Still silent. Akira thinks there’s too much going on his friend’s head for him to talk out loud. He hopes he's asking the right questions.

Elizabeth sits back, still talking to Morgana as if the cat had been the one who asked. “I don’t know. It’s peculiar – making new beings isn’t something the residents of the Room normally do. It’s not what the Room is really for. I’ve always assumed our master made me and the other residents, but you seem like something different, and certainly the purpose you were created with is not the same as mine.”

“Your master… That’s a strange man called Igor, right?”

She nods.

Akira hadn’t realised until then how much he'd been hoping that whole thing was a very persistent hallucination. It’s just too clear a reflection of all the ways he feels bleak and angry at his current situation. He doesn't very often acknowledge that helplessness out loud: the thought that all those feelings are baked into some cognitive reality somewhere for other people to look at makes him squirm.

It's probably for the best that there isn't a weirdly predictable, thematically consistent hallucination that shows up all across Tokyo and and sometimes leaves him voicemail would be bad. But Morgana never seems to remember him stopping at the entrance to the Room outside Iwai’s shop, even when a grouchy Caroline jumps down from her perch on top of the gate and boots him through its gated door. He can say “hey, maybe I should fuse some new personas this afternoon” and the cat will pretty happily discuss which skills or weaknesses or strengths the party is missing, but any references to how or where that happens get skipped past as if he didn’t hear them.

He scratches his head. It's hard to know where to start.

“I still don’t really understand that place. I went there – in a dream, I think? – when I arrived in Tokyo in April. I don’t know why.”

Elizabeth makes a thoughtful noise. Morgana’s looking at him, less panicked now, more thoughtful.

Akira waits, but neither of them say anything more.

“Why would that place create Morgana? Why did it get me involved?”

“I left. Seven years ago. I don’t know much about what’s happened since then.” Elizabeth speaks lightly, but her eyes are sharp. “My sister didn’t understand why I wanted to go at first, but nowadays she does, and she would not have asked me to come here if things were as they should be.”

Is this her way of saying she disapproves of Igor and his methods?

“Well,” She shakes her head, smiles in a way he doesn’t really believe. “Only one way to find out, I suppose!”

She stands up and draws a shape in the air. The outline of a door appears in blue light, then fades again.

Elizabeth frowns, tilts her head. Tries the same thing again with the same results.

“I don’t understand. The Velvet Room is… completely gone.”

* * *

Margaret is sat on a rooftop in a busy shopping district, a position that to be honest she finds a little beneath her dignity.

On ground level, three floors below her, there is an alleyway. Near the end of that alley, there is a shop selling fake guns in excessive varieties and levels of detail. If she touches a hand to the Compendium, its shopkeeper glows with significance in the set of connections she attuned it to from Futaba’s mind.

And so does…

Down at street level, the outline of a doorway that does not currently exist hangs in the air. Margaret is intensely curious about this doorway, for a very simple reason: it does not lead to the Velvet Room.

She has not moved any closer to it. She wants to wait and assess her options before drawing the attention of its guardian. What she can learn from here is limited, but it’s late in the day, and the children have spent today on a quest of their own.

But – just slightly distant, she feels a familiar presence making a familiar movement. Her sister, pulling the energy to open a door into place, but failing, just as she had herself yesterday. With a genuine smile, Margaret opens a doorway of her own and steps through.

She reappears two streets across from where she sensed Elizabeth’s attempt to open a door, and about two inches in front of a very startled Futaba.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL THE DUBIOUS META, ALL OF IT.
> 
> (in other news, Elizabeth has established the Coffee Dad social link of the Hierophant arcana)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Futaba gets angry. Morgana goes on an adventure. Caroline and Justine pick a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains very heavily implied spoilers for how stuff goes down at the end of Persona 3.

_11/29_  
_Tuesday, evening_

After the palace raid, Futaba settles herself in with headphones on, hot drink and ample snacks to hand, and a really cool proof of concept to finish up.

Akira might want to crash out immediately whenever they get back from the Metaverse, but she herself is a delicate creature of many sensory processing peculiarities, and her favourite cure for having spent hours hyperfocused on every detail of the world around her is to spend a couple hours diving deep into stuff that only exists in her brain and seeing if she can make something cool out of it.

She can, in this case. Both the ‘calling card’ and the delivery mechanism are clever as fuck, and it’s a tragedy that the other thieves will only appreciate the first one of those. Probably. Makoto loves knowing how things work, and Futaba kiiiind of thinks she’s got the right kind of mind to enjoy infosec. But the hacker also knows that she’s bad at telling the difference between ‘politely interested’ and ‘wants to listen to twenty minutes of context about how bits of the internet know one another exist so she can understand just how perfect this particular BGP hijacking attack is’.

She’s taking a sip of her (cold, untouched) green tea, brain shifted away from planning into trying to think of fun, easily understandable ways to explain them to the others, when all of a sudden the monitors in front of her light up with a whole lotta glowy blue reflections.

Futaba spins her chair around with what would have been a pretty embarrassing shriek if her throat wasn’t dry. Margaret, approximately half an inch away, puts a hand out to stop the chair’s motion about a second before catching a mug of cold tea to the general boob area.

“I apologise. I miscalculated.” Margaret says, taking a step back.

“Yeah, like,” Futaba flails her arms wildly, “Maybe next time don’t just appear in someone’s bedroom with no warning in the middle of the night!!!”

“Oh, not that,” Margaret shakes her head. “I am sorry for startling you, but more importantly, my sister has arrived in Yongen-Jaya and gone to speak to directly to Kurusu-san.”

“Wait, wait, what?”

“Come with me.”

“I – shit, okay, give me a second to put some clothes on.”

Margaret ignores this to draw a door through reality between desk and bed – it’s much neater than the glowing doom portal Futaba’s app had made, an actual doorway, with a neat blue wooden-looking frame and a fancy latticework of decoration across the top panel. Once it’s finished shimmering into reality, she takes Futaba by the shoulder and steers her firmly towards it. Futaba squeaks and ducks aside to grab a dressing gown before submitting to the inevitable, and is very glad she did when she arrives barefoot in front of the counter of LeBlanc.

“Huh.” Akira just pushes his glasses up his nose and tilts his head at her as another mysterious blonde who must be Margaret’s sister springs towards them.

“Sister.” Margaret says, placing a hand on Mysterious Blonde #2’s shoulder. Her voice is warm.

“Futaba, hey.” Akira says, looking away from the siblings to her.

Futaba hastily finishes tying her dressing gown and clambers up onto the booth opposite him, pretending her face isn’t red.

He knows her well. Instead of putting any of the questions he absolutely definitely must have about this into words, he just quirks an eyebrow at her.

Futaba hugs her knees. “I… Queen and I kind of stirred up trouble.”

“Oh?” Margaret’s sister asks, abruptly scooting over to sit beside Futaba. She seems younger than Margaret, bright-eyed with curiosity as she leans over with her chin in her hands to listen

Futaba ducks her head forwards so her hair makes a curtain between them, then pulls her thoughts together and gives a brief explanation of how they came to investigate the Meta-Nav (a few too many weird non-sequiturs from Akira, a suspicious lack of tech consistency in the app) and then onto how they met Margaret (“we knew it was risky, but we were worried about you and Mona-chan”).

When she finally looks up at Akira, he’s sat with crossed arms, shoulders tense. He’s always a little hard to read, but this definitely isn’t a happy almost-sibling.

“I… We’re sorry.” She says, looking up at him. “We really were just trying to scout for info, and Margaret showing up kinda threw us off, but we should have come back to the group first anyway”

“Geez, Oracle! That was risky!” Morgana says, tail lashing behind him.

Akira shrugs. “Might be important, though.”

It’s really really weird to see him curled up in on himself, sounding all passive. Weird and wrong. And this is the Akira rescue mission; it shouldn’t be causing collateral damage to the very person it’s meant to help!

Clearly desperate measures are called for: Futaba crawls over the top of the table to him, leans in until her head’s resting against his shoulder. She’s still not sure what to say when she can’t tell what’s going on in his head, but she bonks her forehead against his shoulder affectionately: I’m here for you.

Akira blinks, then laughs a little, pats her on the head.

“Futaba… it’s okay.”

“We got thrown for a bit of a loop, is what he means.” Morgana says.

“Indeed. There is a place posing at the Velvet Room; I found a doorway in the district named Shibuya. Since the nature of the Room is to be hidden from public view, I imagine you had very few opportunities to see through the deception” Margaret says.

“An imposter, posing as our master.” Elizabeth growls. “We need to stop them. The only question is how.”

“Morgana here is right that it was dangerous for these children to seek me out. They should not have needed to intervene.”

“Nah,” Futaba says, leaning forward to look Margaret in the eyes, feeling the kind of dumb urge to shelter Akira behind her. “I’m gonna be straight with you here, I’m not OK with you going off on your own to solve this problem among yourselves. I’m sorry that your whole metaspace room thing got infiltrated, but it’s honestly still creepy as fuck that there’s anyone pulling the strings behind the scene, whether it’s you or some ‘imposter’ person.”

Margaret looks just a touch taken aback.

“Don’t get me wrong, I say this as the kind of person who blackmailed a bunch of strangers into hacking my brain. I’m absolutely OK with the idea of weird metaphor Metaverse brain surgery. But what we’re doing as the thieves, that’s… us fixing our own world’s problems, y’know? We live in this society and we’re acting to set right its wrongs. As far as I can tell you aren’t from shere, and you haven’t explained your stake in it beyond saying you want to show people the right way.”

Elizabeth leans back in her seat in an exaggerated ‘welp, this is your problem’ gesture, giving Margaret an amused look.

Margaret herself stays quiet for a moment, then offers. “I understand your concerns.”

“Do you?” Elizabeth asks, pointed.

“I do.” Margaret says, calm. She folds her hands together, and her words are slow and thoughtful when she replies. “I admit, when you left us, sister, I thought you were being foolhardy. I still doubt that you will be able to change your former guest’s fate, but I do now understand why it matters to you to try.”

“That’s nice, but it means nothing at all to the rest of us!” Morgana complains.

Elizabeth looks down, shoulders tight. Margaret speaks on her behalf. “It’s a long story, and not entirely ours to tell. The part that matters is: you’re right, Sakura, we’re not part of your world. Our role is to stand aside from it and act as a counterbalance against forces trying to disrupt it. To give humans the tools to determine their own fates, might be the best way of putting it.”

“Except when we can’t.” Elizabeth says, tense and angry.

“Indeed. Sometimes the only difference we make is that we let our guests choose between one cruel fate and another. But we don’t have an agenda: we want you and your to make your own decisions and fight your own battles.”

“Who… made you? Who opposes you? Is that the person that’s blocked your access to the real Velvet Room?” Morgana asks, prowling between the two sisters as he questions them

They give one another a tense look.

“As I said, we can’t tell most of the story.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?” Futaba asks. “Never mind. Why’s Akira the one caught up in this, and what’s – ?”

“It’s late.” Akira says abruptly, standing up. “I do care about the answers to that, but we’ve had a long day. Can it wait til tomorrow?”

“Very well!” Elizabeth says at once.

Akira nods and heads upstairs without another word.

“Good to meet you both… I think.” Mona tells them, before jumping down from the table to follow his human.

Which leaves… just Futaba in this room. Aw, shit. Sure, she’s grown as a person over the last few months, but has she really levelled up to the point where Akira thinks she’ll be OK chasing the scary blonde aliens out of the shop and locking up alone?

Still. She hasn’t seen him that quiet and distressed since Haru’s father died. Not even staging his own death had shaken him up this much. And how many times has he saved the day when random encounters in the outside world go badly for her? She’s levelled up enough to try and repay the favour.

There isn’t a door to Akira’s loft for visitors to knock on, but when he hears feet climb half way up the stairs and a gentle tap against the wall, he knows what Futaba’s getting at.

Morgana’s curled up, if not asleep then pretending to be, so Akira pads over to the stairs instead of inviting her in. The cafe gets cold quickly at night, so he perches half way down the staircase, balancing the priorities of the light from downstairs and the heat from the space heater in his room.

Futaba puts her back against one wall and her feet on the other and wedges her skinny body into the space of a single step just below him.

“Hey. I…” Futaba says, then trails off. He can almost see her thinking through and discarding dialogue options. Dork.

“I said it’s okay, didn’t I?” Akira says. “I’d rather be freaked out and getting answers than calm and ignorant.”

Futaba nods, fidgets with her headphones, gives a half-shrug. “People are scary.”

“Yeah. ‘Specially ones from some cognitive dimensions that seem like they’re shaped around the things you’re scared of. It… It’s silly, but I was really hoping that place would turn out not to be real.”

From Futaba’s look of concern, he guesses that came out a bit less like of a casual FYI and a bit more like he’s been having a low key mental breakdown for the last six months. Shit. He hasn’t, has he? Except in the useful way that lets you summon your persona.

How can he step back from this?

‘It’s ok, on some levels it is probably better that the voices in my head are actual people’?

Nope, too smart-arsey.

‘It’s OK, I got kind of fond of the prison dimension that lets me ritually behead fragments of my subconscious after a while!’

… Definitely not.

‘I thought the Velvet Room was my Palace, but there weren’t any hits on the Nav for me’?

Also not reassuring.

“We’ll figure this out.” Futaba says, determination on her face. “You fixed up my distorted cognition. Even if it’s not quite the same thing, it’s time for me to return the favour.”

He still can’t think of anything to say, but now it’s in a how-did-I-have-the-good-luck-to-find-these-people happy way.

“I don’t actually think that’s those two’s deal, though. That scary opposite-of-a-palace thing. The place we went to was just empty.” Futaba says, “It was like you were floating in space on this tiny little corner of rock, stars all around, and empty doorways. Really spooky, but kind of beautiful.”

“… Huh.”

“The sea of souls, Margaret said. What she said was that this Velvet Room place they talk about is a lighthouse to, like, show people stuff about themselves they haven’t noticed. Or something. It was a weird metaphor.”

Akira smiles, reassured despite himself. Sounds pretty different to the place he’s known by that name.

* * *

  
_11/30_  
_Wednesday, morning_

>> _hey prez, shit got real._  
>> _I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, but can u skip school and come to leblanc?_  
>> Futaba, what happened???

* * *

Akira wakes up and spends a good minute not thinking about anything urgent at all. It’s a pleasant little moment. He has a nice stretch, then tucks his bare feet back under the covers. They really should get double glazing up in here.

Morgana stirs next to him, climbs up to sit on his chest.

Akira brushes his hair out of his face, opens his eyes to see a very solemn feline facial expression. There’s times that cohabiting with the responsible forward-planning team-mate doesn’t work in his favour. What is it that threatening their lives or careers or academic prospects this week? The number of possibilities that jump to mind says a lot about how this month has gone for him.

Ah. That’s right. Margaret and Elizabeth, Futaba’s great work of cross-dimensional hacking. And Morgana, yesterday, finally finding out his origins.

The leader of the phantom thieves shuts his eyes again, letting his hand fall back onto the bed.

“They said you came from that place… the Velvet Room.”

Morgana makes a quiet, unhappy sound at the words. He’s been clinging pretty hard to the hope of returning to a human form one day, Akira knows. Even if they’d both started to suspect it was unlikely, it must sting to find out for sure.

“I remember now.” Morgana speaks so low it’s hard to hear even in the dead quiet of LeBlanc before Sojiro’s come in to open shop. “I… was born there.”

Akira props his head up on his arm to give Morgana the attention this information deserves.

“It was because of this threat those two came to find.” Morgana’s voice is very flat. “A malicious spirit. It had grown strong enough to imprison my master and blind his assistant, so master Igor created me and sent me to look for you in this world.”

Huh.

“He hid my memories so I wouldn’t raise any suspicions.” Morgana said, still quiet, but sounding more like himself. “So I set off to explore the Metaverse, and I only knew I needed to find strong allies. And that there was something important hidden at the bottom of Mementos.”

“Well, I’m glad we had you with us.” Akira says, leaving Mementos aside for the moment. “No matter why you’re here.”

Morgana hops down from Akira’s bed to perch on the desk. He embarrassed, but still pleased.

* * *

 

Elizabeth shows up early, happy at the sharp feel of the winter air on her face and on the bare skin of her arms. This place, the café LeBlanc, is set back an unprepossessing little alleyway, and she’s the first customer of the morning, and even though she’s been wandering the human world for a few years now, there’s still a little thrill to just existing here. In letting yourself get cold, and then walking into a warm building and warming up. In smelling coffee, and looking forward to drinking it.

“Ah, you came back.”

She had indeed. It hadn’t been intentional, really, finding this place yesterday. She had wanted to find the place in this city with the most going on, and this little corner stood out to the eyes of an ex-attendant of the Velvet Room. The moment she had walked through this door something in the back of her mind had clicked with satisfaction: there is a story here, there is a journey.

“Of course!” She says, hopping up onto a bar stool at the counter to smile at the human behind the bar. “Your coffee is delicious. Can I try another blend?”

“It’s a shop, isn’t it? Tell me what you fancy.”

Elizabeth contemplates, eyes moving slowly over the carefully curated selection of beans against the cafe’s back wall. The names mean nothing to her but the sheer variety in them is something to treasure.

“Something warming. Comforting. I’ve heard people say coffee can be chocolatey, but I can’t see how that’s possible. I like the idea, though. Do you have coffee like that?”

“Ehhh,” he says, “Keep in mind, the kind of people who write tasting notes for coffee are the kind of people who take a metaphor and run so far with it they forget where they started from. Have a try of this, though - light roast, Colombian beans. It’s the coffee I’d make for people who normally take theirs with milk to convince them good coffee isn’t too bitter without it.”

He starts preparing her a cup, and when he notices how closely she watches the process, he explains the steps.

The coffee is delicious. A mix of many interesting flavours that balance one another out, blending into an almost creamy richness on the tongue. It doesn’t taste much like chocolate, but the way the different flavours combine does have something in common with very dark chocolate melting on the tongue. A whole that’s greater than the sum of their parts.

“Good?” Sakura asks.

Talking might disrupt the coffee-drinking experience, so she doesn’t. It’s easy to tell he doesn’t really need an answer. The quiet, slightly smug look of contentment on his face tells the story.

This is a good place.

* * *

 

Makoto hasn’t ever skipped school before. She doesn’t think she’s missed out on much, if this is how it normally goes: it’s nerve racking. It shouldn’t be, really – Sae leaves much earlier than her younger sister and gets home much later, and Yongen-Jaya’s the opposite direction to school from her house, so the chances of running into anyone she knows are minimal.

The student council president still feels like she stands out a mile as she takes the subway the wrong direction.

She makes herself take deep breaths, eyes down on a book she hasn’t read a single page of. She’s decided what she’ll say anyone asks what she’s doing: she’s going to a dentist appointment.

It’s fine. She’s got three years of perfect attendance on record. She can give up one day to untangle some of the inner workings of the Metaverse.

Akira’s guardian is behind the counter when she comes in, and there’s a woman she doesn’t recognise at a stool in front of it. She looks kind of the wrong demographic for LeBlanc.

Sojiro looks up in slight surprise to have another customer so early, then recognises her. “Kid… I’d expect Sakamoto to skip school, but you’re meant to be the respectable one.”

“I’m sorry.” Makoto says sheepishly. “It really is important, though.”

He gives her a flat look. “So’s finishing school.”

“Oh?” The woman looks between the two of them with interest. “Why?”

She has… fairly distinctive eyes.

“Y’know, I genuinely can’t tell if you’re messing with me.” Sakura shakes his head. “Is this how you repay me for letting you in on the secret arts of coffee?”

The almost-certainly-Margaret-related stranger rests her chin on her hand. “I am but a humble newcomer to this land, please forgive my ignorance.”

“First a talking cat, now whatever the hell’s going on with this one... Niijima, one day I’m going to make to sit down and make you give me a straight answer about the complete mess that is your lives.”

The customer’s lips quirk up into a grin: “Really, you’re not going to ask me?”

“You think I’m an idiot?” he says wryly. “Flatter my coffee all you want, but I’d put money on you being able to spin a better line of bullshit than this one.”

Makoto’s a little concerned, because she’s fairly sure Margaret would take that as a slight against her character. This woman looks almost gleeful at the accusation instead, and sounds fond when she says: “Maybe so, but I don’t think you’d be easily fooled.”

“I’m sorry that we’ve been worrying you, Sakura-san,” Makoto says. “Our lives have got pretty complicated these last few weeks.”

“Well, next time think twice before picking a fight with the high and mighty, then.” he grumps. “Honestly. You’re meant to wait until you’ve set off for college before you start acting up.”

He pours her a coffee to take away as he says it, though, and steps over to the stairs and yells up. “Oi, kid, you’ve got a guest.”

Morgana and Akira traipse downstairs a few minutes later, and as they walk over to pick up Futaba, Margaret appears two steps behind them with a plan.

“I believe there’s a clear next step to take.”

She describes the doorway outside Iwai’s, tells them that there’s a ‘fragment of a person’ guarding it.

“I see. Perhaps if we can restore her, she’ll be able to tell us more.” Elizabeth speculates.

“I think you two should go,” Morgana says to the sisters. “But if this imposter is watching our leader, maybe he should stay away.”

Akira makes a thoughtful sound, nods.

“Agreed,” Margaret says. “Elizabeth and I will speak to the guard. Morgana, come with us.”

“Huh?” the cat asks.

“This affects you too.”

* * *

 

And so, the three normal humans hide out in the diner while their supernatural allies set off for Iwai’s. Ryuji texts three times asking if they’re going to head into Shido’s palace after school. Ann and Yusuke once each. Akira spins his phone on his finger restlessly, indecisive, then replies in groupchat: Maybe, but there might be a complication. Meet at the cafe.

Makoto looks up. “You’re going to explain the situation, then?”

“No, you two are.”

“But I’m bad at that!” Futaba says immediately.

He sits back, crosses his arms. Tough luck.

“It is us who set these events in motion.” Makoto agrees with his unspoken judgement. “And… we also know that Akira’s ability to communicate about this subject can be compromised.”

She gives him a glance like she’s worried this might offend him. Haha, nope. He’s 1000% comfortable admitting weakness here.

“Not maybe, it is compromised. That place… every time I try to talk about it, it’s like people’s minds skip right over it. Even saying things like ‘hey, Morgana, can you see this weird glowing doorway’.”

“Huh! The weirdness works both ways!” Futaba says, clearly delighted to put together another few bits of cognitive psience theory.

Makoto shakes her head. Akira can’t disagree with her: it is unsettling.

* * *

Margaret leads the little group down the alleyway to Untouchable, then slows to a halt, looking up at something around head height. Trying to follow her gaze makes a spike of pain in Morgana’s head.

“What’s wrong?” Elizabeth crouches beside him.

“Whatever’s there’s making my head hurt.”

“That won’t do!” She holds a hand over his eyes. “There is an attendant who says she is called Caroline. She is sat on top of a heavy steel gate that is an entrance to the Velvet Room, about three feet in front of Margaret, directly facing her.”

And then she takes her hand away, and the girl and the door are there exactly as she said.

The girl – Caroline – is looking down at the group from her perch, tapping a stun baton against her off hand.

“Who is she? And why do you have the cat with you?”

“This is my sister, Elizabeth. Morgana here is a creation of our true master. I believe he was sent away from the room before you came to be a part of it, but I brought him to you so I could verify that.”

The girl leans forward, staring them down like a hawk from on top of the door: “Why do you say true master?”

Morgana can’t see Margaret’s expression as she takes another step towards the girl, but her voice is ever so gentle: “Master Igor is missing, and the place you know as the Velvet Room is under the influence of an imposter.”

“You’re lying! Lying!”

Margaret bows low, one hand on her compendium. “I apologise for bringing you this difficult news.”

“No, it’s true.” Elizabeth adds, shifting from foot to foot. “Sorry.”

Morgana stays quiet through this. He’s… kind of with Futaba on this one, actually, right now.

The fake Igor messed with Akira’s brain. The real one apparently messed with Morgana’s memories and programmed him to go make friends with Akira. Which is creepier? His heart says ‘the imposter’, but his brain is yelling that at the end of the day, all of it seems like just another pair of corrupt adults manipulating impressionable kids.

“Prove it!” Caroline demands.

“As you wish. Please, come with me.” Margaret says, turning to open a doorway.

Through the door, Caroline looks around the strange bleak landscape, wide-eyed. Morgana does too, though with much less suspicion and one fewer weapon held ready to strike.

“This place… it brings back memories.” The girl says, low. Then, angrily: “But what does it mean?”

“This is an island on the sea of souls. It should be a home to a light that guides travellers. Each guest sees it in their own way, as a source of direction or a step on their journey, but it it is always this place that they see.”

The girl looks up at her sibling, something soft in her eyes. She looks so young. Like she’s not used to getting answers when she asks questions, Morgana thinks, and feels almost protective of the weird little kid for a moment.

“Try opening a door to the room you know.” Margaret says.

“I… Justine’s better at that than me.” Caroline says, with some reluctance.

“Justine?” Elizabeth asks. “There’s two of you?”

Caroline nods. She glares fixedly at something in the middle distance, takes a deep breath, then sketches the outline of a door with the baton she has in her hand.

A blue outline hangs in the air for a second before fuzzing out like static.

“That – I probably did it wrong. She can show you. Take me back.”

Justine turns out to be another yellow-eyed girl-child, identical except for eyes and hair and body language. Instead of a baton she holds a clipboard close to her chest, and the reserve she holds herself with reminds Morgana a little of that shogi-playing friend of Akira’s.

Where Margaret comes across as reserved and professional, this one looks honestly shy. Age probably means something a bit different to residents of this weird dreamscape, but both these two read as way too young to be doing whatever it is they do.

Justine’s door fizzles out as well.

“The place you have been told is the Velvet Room is in fact an imitation.” Margaret says. “Wherever it really is, it exists outside the sea of souls. The real one is missing, along with its master, and I suspect the place you know as the Velvet Room is a cage designed to contain him.”

A beat of absolute silence.

“Sister. We know we’re missing memories.” Justine says, eyes on her twin.

“But we don’t know why.” Caroline picks up the sentence.

“We have no evidence that these two are what they say they are.”

“Are they real attendants of the Room, or are they the shams?”

“Perhaps we have one way to determine their nature.”

“You’re right, Justine!” Caroline says, eyes fierce. “You two… If you really are our predecessors, it’s time to prove your strength!”

Elizabeth’s answering grin is feral.

* * *

 

Ann >> complicated how tho??? whats going on?  
Haru >> Is everything OK over there? We can get out of class if you need us.  
Yusuke >> Indeed. Just say the word.  
Futaba >> nah hold ur horses, we’re fine  
Makoto >> No urgent threat. It’s complicated, but we uncovered some extra information you should all be aware of.  
Ryuji >> wait a sec…. Queen…. prez….  
Ryuji >> are you skipping class?! 0__o  
Ryuji >> holy shit i’m so proud

* * *

The twins are strong, resourceful, and quick to cover one another’s weaknesses and heal one another’s wounds. In fact, the two of them fight better as a pair than Margaret herself does with Elizabeth.

They’re young, though. This might be the first time they’ve fought against equals: the older two residents get them off balance early and keep them on the defensive. Margaret and Elizabeth systematically take them apart until neither twin has the energy for another healing spell, their teamwork getting better and better as the fight draws on.

“You fought well, little cousins.” Elizabeth says. “Enough?”

Caroline is on hands and knees, Justine standing forward to defend her but on shaky footing herself.

They speak as one: “We surrender.”

And Justine holds a hand up to her covered eye: “I… remember”

* * *

In a place that is not the Velvet Room, a being who is not its guardian feels something in the foundations of its domain shudder.

Its spindly figure stands up from its desk with the graceless movements of a marionette.

It felt something crack underfoot: the first tremor of an earthquake.

* * *

 

“We were… torn apart.” Caroline says.

“We used to be one.” Justine sinks to the ground to take her twin’s hands.

“We are divided by an evil will. To hide our memories and our true nature.”

“So that we’d follow an imposter’s agenda.”

* * *

The imposter looks around the cell doors. Its control has slipped: it does not understand how, but it knows its wardens have left their posts and that they will not be returning.

How? The trickster had been obedient, struggling against the rules of society but following without question the guiding hand on his shoulder. The room’s master is still secure.  
No matter. The one meddling will be found and removed. But the twins were powerful, even divided. For now, it might be better to step back and watch the situation…

In Mementos, Shido’s Palace, and across Tokyo, a set of hidden doors flare bright and then wink out into nothingness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Futaba's trying very hard and I'm very proud of her.)
> 
> About her "I just want someone to admire my genius" ramble - I always feel so bad for The One Genius Hacker in a series. Let your hackers come in little posses so they can bounce ideas off one another!
> 
> I think Futaba could actually get good at explaining cool technology stuff pretty quickly! She's pretty eloquent, and she's good at relating new information back to things her audience already understands (vidjagame mechanics for social skills! lol that's so meta).
> 
> But then, she's an awful meme child with very little self control, so it's possible she'd just spam baffling memes at people 4eva. HEY MAKOTO, LOOK HOW COOL [THIS IS](https://twitter.com/powerdns_bert/status/878291436034170881?lang=en).
> 
> Makoto clicks the link, sees a badly drawn monochrome cat, spends 20 minutes googling around for context and getting buried in an ever-increasing sea of acronyms. Because she's the kind of person who hates admitting she doesn't understand something, she just never acknowledges the text at all.
> 
> (They are good lonely teenage nerd friends and asking herself the 'should I really explain the thing though?' question puts Futaba a long way ahead of the geek population as a whole.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgana and Lavenza probably have a lot to talk about.
> 
> The Phantom Thieves aren't great at contingency plans.

_11/30_  
_Wednesday, after school_

* * *

The ground where the four Velvet Room attendants fought is scorched and jagged from the battle, but the air no longer feels charged with threat. It seems safe to emerge now, so Morgana makes his way over to where the twins are crouched on the ground.

“So you’re saying, you were originally one person?”

The twins nod. They’re holding hands. It’s offensively cute, and a little incongruous from a pair who could take the Phantom Thieves down in two minutes flat.

“Can we put them back as they should be?” Elizabeth asks.

“First things first.” Margaret calls healing light down around all four combatants, then reaches out to lay a hand on Justine’s forehead. “Hm. I see it now, how this was done to you.”

“Please, restore us!”

There’s so much hope and fear and excitement in Caroline’s voice. Morgana has to look away, thinking of dreams of winning his way back to human and nightmares of waking up in Mementos as just another monster.

It’s different, of course.

“You are two are one being, divided.” Margaret says, slow and thoughtful. “I am one of those who preside over power, and I have been granted the knowledge to shape the sea of souls.”

She guides the two to their feet, reaches one hand out to rest on the forehead of each. She doesn’t move, just standing with eyes half-closed with concentration, but a shape flickers into existence around the two of them. Rings and sigils, patterns that shine with an edge of familiarity to Morgana’s eyes.

The mark rises into the air and pulls the two kids off the ground along with it for a second – Justine’s is expression at peace, Caroline’s eyes wide. Then Margaret holds up a hand abruptly and it flickers out.

“I’m sorry. I cannot restore you yet. There can not be remaking without understanding; I cannot fuse the two of you back to your original form without being able to see you as you truly are now.”

“Can someone who does know them do it then?” Morgana asks.

“Our true master could.” Margaret says. “But...”

“If someone knows them, we can use their knowledge.” Elizabeth says, eyes speculative. “Kurusu should, no?”

* * *

After a while, Futaba, Makoto and Akira reach the limits of the diner’s willingness to let them loiter on the back of one drink purchase each. The trio ambles through Shibuya, ends up browsing manga.

Crowds are getting easier nowadays, but Futaba still appreciates the way Akira stays close enough to provide cover against anyone who gets too near.

She still jumps like whoa when her phone rings.

“Who is it?” Makoto asked.

“… Unknown.”

“Want me to answer?” Akira asked.

Futaba handed the phone over. Sure, she’s been getting better with socialising, but phone calls from strangers are endgame stuff on the pretending-to-be-neurotypical skill tree.

“Hi, who’s calling?”

She can’t hear the person on the other end.

“… Seriously? How did you get her number?” Pause. “Hm. OK.”

Pause.

“Outside Iwai’s will draw attention. Just head to the main road and we’ll meet you.”

He hands the phone back, shaking his head at the conversation, and they make their way outside.

Margaret and Elizabeth are there, both already fairly conspicious individuals to be wandering Shibuya at school chucking-out-time, now stand out approximately 1000% more, on account of they’ve acquired two little girls in odd uniforms and then decided to obstruct the road and have a very grave conversation. The kid with plaits is holding Morgana, which makes Morgana look very big and the kid look even tinier.

Margaret turns to them as they approach: “The imposter is aware of us.”

“Caroline! Justine!” Akira completely ignores the older woman to say. That’s right… these two are from his instance of that place, the one he’s been seeing since he arrived in Tokyo but hasn’t been able to talk about.

Man. Futaba can’t even imagine it. She’d thought hallucinating a shadow version of her for a few days was taxing on the old sanity meter.

“Inma – Guest.” Justine says, almost inaudible. She looks like she wants to hide behind Morgana. “We’ve failed you.”

Caroline kicks the floor. “We completely screwed up. We’re useless.”

“Hey.” Akira crouches so he’s at eye level with them. “It’s okay. I’ve learned a lot about distorted realities this year.”

The twins look from him to one another and back, hesitant. Completely against her will, Futaba finds them moving from ‘weird’ to ‘adorable’ in her mental taxonomy.

He stands back up, then bows to them. “So let’s start again. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m Akira Kurusu.”

“That’s a cute gesture, but don’t get ahead of yourself.” Elizabeth says. “You’re still not talking to their real self!”

* * *

By the time Akira’s made a trip to the attendants’ weird empty space world with them, they're almost forty minutes late to the rendezvous at LeBlanc and his mind is blown.

Turns out Caroline and Justine had been one person all along.

Turns out it’s possible fuse things together without causing any bodily harm to anything involved, at least if you're a sophisticated and professional supernatural lady called Margaret.

And now, the entrance to what he’d known as the Velvet Room is gone.

Akira should probably just trade in his ability to be surprised for something more useful. Double glazing, maybe. Or a couple more of Takemi’s energy-restoring stimulant patches.

Elizabeth returns him to the other two thieves while the attendants stay with Lavenza in the other world, and he spends the whole subway ride over ignoring concerned text from the group thinking about it: Margaret can look through him and use whatever she saw there as an input for some odd, glyph-and-card-based ritual. Is this cognitive psience? Or real, inexplicable magic. Maybe Futaba knows.

The other, stupider, part of him is upset the Velvet Room door is gone. It's a dumb thought to have. It would have been a terrible idea to visit a place that can probably somehow read his mind while suspecting it of being evil. Still. Akira can’t help but wish he’d known to stop by yesterday before they left the palace.

He wants to explain this whole big weird aside to the others at LeBlanc before getting back to Shido’s palace, but Ryuji and Ann are impatient. Well, it’ll wait, and Shido’s palace is time-critical. Unless something unforeseen happens, they’ll be able to secure the infiltration route today, send the calling card the next, and be done with it on Friday before moving on to this next mystery.

This nearly even works. They secure the route, and they're on their way out when Akechi drops in on them, ranting and raving.

For someone who’s been stalking them for half a year, he’s kept hold of a very idealised view of Akira: ‘Your heart is always free’, really? ‘You don’t let yourself be tied down by your past’?

Akira smirks, even though matching Akechi’s mania with his own Joker-masked flippancy is a bad tactic for negotiating on. His past has its claws sunk deep into his heart; he just has allies to pull him forward despite it.

“… But that’s when it happened. That's when I discovered the cognitive world! Someone, be it a god or a demon, gave me a chance!”

“Sure, a chance to take on a job as a hit-man! Are you proud, asshole? Gonna put that on your CV?” Ryuji taunts.

“Who cares?” Akechi’s grin turns a little manic. “My targets are all doing the same out here. You’re even picking your victims in a popularity contest. It’s a dog eat dog world.”

Akira’s mind races. What could get through to him?

And then he realises: "We learned more about the person that gave you that power.”

Akechi stops laughing, narrows his eyes.

“They’re manipulating us.” Akira keeps going. “No different from Shido using the Thieves to stir up the public, really.”

“Just even harder to hold to account." Morgana adds.

“You’re lying. I’ve looked through every bit of cognitive psience that exists in the world. Everything your mother – ” a careless wave at Futaba “ – ever committed to writing. There’s no clues of anything like that, no trace.”

“Ha.” The mix of pride and anger in Futaba’s voice made Akira’s heart twist. Of course: this is her mother’s legacy. “Ace detective, maybe, but you’re no hacker. We’re not lying. We found proof there’s someone pulling the strings, and how they’re doing it, and we’re going to hunt them down.”

“Yeah, you don’t need to pick a fight with us.” Ann speaks up. “We’re going after Shido here, same as you.”

Ryuji nods, sincerity radiating from him. “It’s not too late. Back out from Shido’s plans and come with us. You’re meant to be a smart guy, so stop doing his dirty work.”

“I killed your dad.” Akechi snarls at Haru. “Your mother.” At Futaba. “And I still don’t know how you stopped me killing you.” he finishes with, spitting the words at Akira. “It’s sure as hell not because I had any mercy to spare for you.”

“I’m not going to pretend I forgive you.” Haru says simply.

“Then why tell me you want to be a team!?”

“You know how we work. We believe in changing people’s hearts.” Futaba says. “Maybe you don’t literally have a palace, but Shido’s distorted your cognition all the same. He may be your father, but you don’t need to let him shape who you are now.”

“I’m not doing this for his sake, you shut-in imbecile! I’m doing it to get close enough to kill him.”

“You’re shaping your world around him all the same. Have you ever thought about what you’ll do the day after the moment you get your vengeance?” Her voice is soft. “I know what that’s like. If you hadn’t pulled that fake Medjed trick, I’d still be lost in despair too.”

“It’s not despair!” Akechi screams. “He _trusts me_ and I’m _going to kill him!_ ”

And then he cackles and calls his persona, and says: “Let me show you how.”

* * *

“… Elizabeth. Liz.” Sojiro pushes his glasses up his nose. “Want to tell me why at least two deliverymen think this is your home address?”

“You see, I don’t have a postal address.”

“Oh, that seems like a good reason to use mine, does it?” The cafe owner shakes his head. “Two people stopped me in the street this morning to ask who you are and whether I’ve adopted another delinquent, you realise that?”

“My apologies. Futaba demonstrated to me how this modern convenience of ‘internet shopping’ works, I didn’t realise there was some kind of etiquette involved.”

“What sins did I commit in a previous life, tell me that. I offer to take in one kid. One! Then before you know it, it’s a kid and a cat, then there’s a whole pack of teenagers, and now there’s some kind of family of actual space aliens sending me their internet shopping. Why do you even want kid-sized clothes. Actually, don’t answer that.”

“You told me just yesterday it was too early for you to retire!” Elizabeth chirps. “So I know you wouldn’t want your life to be boring.”

The door swings open. What looked like an entertaining next phase of Sojiro’s rant gets shunted out of the way in favour of a greeting for the Wednesday afternoon regulars, and he puts a hand on her shoulder to steer her back behind the bar.

“Fine, if you’re going to skulk in my shop all day you can make yourself useful.”

It appears that she’s inconvenienced her host without meaning to, but she doesn’t think his anger is real. And surely it is a mark of trust, have been invited to help operate this café. Elizabeth sets herself to following his instructions with a quiet, proud smile.

* * *

Akechi’s berserk shadows are strong, and the detective himself even stronger, but eventually they knock him down to the ground and he can’t pick himself up again.

Akira approaches, slow and careful. Akechi looks up, eyes big and desperate behind that red beak of a mask.

Normally in a tough fight, he finds himself a bit distant from reality: as if Okumura-san’s Shadow really is just a monster, and the casino boss Sae Niijima is no relation to his dear friend Makoto. It's a bit like Joker is a version of himself with all the spare feelings stripped out for more focus.

Right now, he still just feels sad for Akechi.

“I don’t want to be enemies.”

Akechi snarls like an animal: “How the _fuck_ could you get the better of me? You nothing, you pathetic attic-dwelling _trash_.”

“You’re stronger than me, but not stronger than the team.”

“You and your washed-up idiotic power of friendshi--”

“Stop.” Akira cuts him off without thinking. His friends are here to right the wrong that exiled him to Tokyo; they hacked into another dimension for him, they’ve made rebuilding a life here worth it.

“Let’s argue about it later.” Morgana says. “This place is on high alert, and if we try to hash it all out here, we’ll end up with company.”

Akechi mutters something vicious, but lets Yusuke and Ryuji haul one of his arms over a shoulder each and haul him back to the safe room.

He bolts the second they get back to reality.

* * *

“What now? Is it even safe to send a calling card?” Ann asks.

It’s late, really too late to be out still. They’re huddled in the freezing cold in a park most of the way back towards the subway entrance from the Diet building, all too on edge about Akechi to go their separate ways yet. Ann’s curled up with her hands wrapped around her knees in uncharacteristic nervousness, pigtails falling in front of her shoulders.

“Akechi knows Akira’s alive. He knows what our plans are and how we operate. If he was watching us before he attacked, he might even know our infiltration route.”

“He’s unstable, but he almost seemed to be listening to us at the end there.” Haru argues. “He wants Shido taken down badly.”

“He wants to be the one to do it, though.” Ryuji counters.

“True.” Morgana says. “It would be best to be sure he won’t interfere before we strike. We don’t need to rush this, remember - there’s still two weeks until the election.”

“But the longer we wait the more chance he’ll tell Shido or make a move on Akira at LeBlanc.” Makoto points out.

“Do we have a way to contact him?” Yusuke asks.

“His old phone is still in his apartment. I don’t think he’s using it – it hasn’t moved for days – but my trackers still show it in place and powered on.”

Makoto straightens her back and speaks up: “We might have other reasons to move quickly. Ann, Haru, Yusuke, Ryuji... Futaba and I started an investigation of our own, and it’s time to share it with the whole team.”

“For real, now? While we’re freezing our tits off out here?”

“This is what you spoke about to Akechi concerning the origin of the app? I admit I was curious.”

“You got it, Inari.” Futaba nodded. “It seemed fishy to me that even a really smart chunk of code could send us to the Metaverse, so I started digging.”

They summarise, telling them that the guardians of this place said the creator of the app’s goal involved pushing Akira to learn about the cognitive world. Then she glances over, trying to pass the narrative thread to him. The rest of the team follows her gaze.

Akira is looking away, thoughtful.

“It makes sense I guess.” Ryuji speaks up. “Things didn’t kick off ‘til this guy came along.”

“You’re getting cause and effect mixed up!” Ann says. “If I’d got that app a month ago, I’d’ve taken that piece of shit down without hesitation!!”

Ryuji chews his lip for a few seconds, obviously thinking hard about it. “Would ya, though? I dunno about you, but looking back on it, I was too trapped in worrying about myself and my decisions to make a move. I knew what Kamoshida was doing was effed up, and I’d daydream about getting a chance to take him down, but until everything went down with Shiho… I don’t know if I’d’a been sure enough about it to take on that castle solo.”

“I’d have come with you, idiot,” Ann bonks him on the head.

There’s a moment of quiet. Ryuji’s got a little half-smile on his face, fondness and trust writ large all over it.

Makoto remembers how convinced she was that he was a troublemaker back then – now, if anything, she’s a bit jealous of Ryuji. He doesn’t hesitate before saying what he thinks, sharing his feelings, drawing people in.

After a moment, Ann looks down. “Yeah, I get what you mean. We all got too used to the situation. I kept saying yes to that fucking creep for Shiho’s sake. God, I’m still so furious about it!”

There’s nothing Makoto can say here. She knows how badly she failed them all.

“Lady Ann…”

“You might be right,” Ann says to Ryuji, deliberately positive. “We needed an outsider to arrive and shake things up!”

Akira shakes his head. “It was all you and Ryuji.”

The group explodes into various noisy denials.

“I mean it.” Their leader shifts to sit crosslegged on the grass, hands on his knees. “I arrived here thinking ‘the most important thing this year is to stay out of trouble’.”

“Huh. How’d that work out for you, bro?” Ryuji asks. Futaba mutters something that sounds suspiciously like ‘lol’.

“Have you ever in your life met someone and stayed out of their problems?” Yusuke asks. He… probably doesn’t mean it as an insult.

Akira shrugs. “I’d already lost my fight. But once I met you all, I wanted to back you up in yours.”

Ryuji puts him in a headlock, the better to scruffle his hair with pride. A couple walk past, hand in hand, tutting at the rowdy teenagers.

“Anyway.” Morgana says. “What they’re getting at is, the inhabitants of this Velvet Room place say their master is missing, and that he’s been replaced by an imposter. That imposter is the one who set Akira up so he’d find his way into the Metaverse and get involved, and what’s worrying is that we still don’t really understand why.

“It sounds like bad news though: the imposter kidnapped one of the people that live in that place and split her in two to make her forget who she was. It was really freaky. And now we’ve shown our hand by putting her back how she should be, it knows we’re onto it.”

“So you’re worried this imposter will attack us.” Haru surmises. “This… puppetmaster.”

“I’m not sure if it’d be a direct attack, exactly.” Morgana steps into the middle of the circle, looking between them all. “The people in that place, they’re not meant to interfere with reality themselves.”

“You’re saying you knew about this stuff all along?” Ryuji squawks. “Why didn’t you say anything, cat?!”

“I didn’t! I only remembered when I met them! And how many times do I have to tell you all-!”

Makoto cuts the cat/not-cat argument off before it can get going. She’s shivering, and the last train’s only a few minutes off. “We don’t understand exactly what this imposter puppetmaster person can and can’t do. We do know they gave us the Meta-Nav app, and they’re most likely the one who gave it to Akechi, too.”

“We know some things.” Akira says, marking a very short list off on his fingers. “They can drag me to their weird dreamscape while I’m sleeping. They can do stuff with personas. They can be invisible to normal people. I knew the imposter was involved in the Metaverse since a few days after I arrived here, but it was impossible for me to talk about until Futaba and Makoto knew already, and until they told you all.”

They talk a bit about it, but it’s all speculation: what’s the imposter’s endgame (don’t know, probably bad things?), why Akira and Akechi would both get the app (… maybe they’re in a weird, secretive gameshow?), and why Akechi some years beforehand (to make sure he ends up as screwed up in the brain as possible?).

Makoto speaks up once she thinks they’re had long enough to process the information: “It’s late. For now, let’s leave it. Unless we get more information from the attendants, our next meeting should focus on Shido and how Akechi affects those plans.”

“Nothing’s changed. We knew he was out there before.” Ryuji says. “I say we send the calling card.”

“He’ll know when we’re infiltrating and be able to set an ambush.” Yusuke says, but he doesn’t sound like he’s disagreeing. “On the other hand, if he tells Shido that our leader is alive before we send the card, it’ll ruin the element of surprise.”

“When told him there’s space for him if he wants to join, he sounded… lonely. Tempted by the offer.” Haru says. “I don’t trust him, but I believe there’s a chance he’ll decide to change.”

Ann nods. “Yeah. Ryuji’s right though. I wish we’d kept hold of him, but if we need to fight him and the palace ruler in a day, we can pull it off.”

“So the only question is ‘when’?”

“As soon as we can. Even tomorrow, if we can swing it!” Ann says, expression fierce.

“For real??!” Ryuji says. “We haven’t prepared one though, and where can we even deliver it to? Security in the Diet building is gonna be impossible!”

“I can sort that out for us!” Futaba says with a slightly scary expression. “I’ve cooked something up that’ll cover this one nicely. And I agree – if we strike tomorrow, I think they’ll be off guard. We hurt Akechi pretty bad, and his persona doesn’t have healing powers. If we’re lucky, he’ll have trouble making it all the way back through the palace before we can.”

There’s still a lot of questions and worries and a lot of ‘oh shit, what’s Akechi going to do now’ hanging unresolved through in the air. It’s late though, too late and too cold and too conspicuous to talk things out properly, so they put it to a vote: act now to keep the element of surprise, or wait and proceed with caution.

It’s unanimous: tomorrow Futaba will hack the midday news. They'll push ahead despite this mysterious imposter and the threat of Akechi, and they’ll take Shido’s treasure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm claiming "hey, you're being manipulated on a whole extra level you didn't know about!" throws Akechi enough he doesn't escalate to Loki-and-black-mask-outfit for round two. Yet.
> 
> Watching the Akechi confrontation: wow, that analysis of Akira is so off base? he's like: "your heart is always free". nah, m8, Akira's battling his way towards freedom despite the chains around his heart, just like all the thieves are.
> 
> Captivity and restriction and the metaphor of breaking chains is SO STRONG through the whole game (like, there's chains floating around literally every persona in their animations??). Wat r u thinking, detective boy? Learned helplessness, that Akechi thinks he's the only one backed up against a corner?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth makes a friend. Akechi makes an impact. The thieves fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As before: contains spoilers for the ending of Persona 3.

_12/01_  
_Thursday, morning_

Futaba wanders over to the cafe late next morning with her laptop under her arm, botnets primed and a file un-google-ably named stillalive.avi triumphantly pre-loaded across three different content delivery services. She’s even slept for a few hours, though not enough to stop it feeling like her brain is struggling through a slow, soupy mess of adrenaline and exhaustion. Coffee will help.

She gets right up to the counter before realising there’s something wrong. Specifically: Sojiro’s nowhere to be seen, and the shorter-haired Velvet Room sister is humming something out of tune and topping up the grinder with the house roast. Behind the bar. That’s not allowed.

Strike one against the calming pre-heist breakfast she was hoping for.

There’s even two tables of customers in the shop, left to the dubious mercy of this new part-timer. Futaba finds it hard to believe anyone would accept foodstuffs from Elizabeth, but some people just don’t have any self-preservation instincts at all.

She’d known from her audio feed of the cafe that Sojiro kind of weirdly gets along with the younger of the two outsiders, but surely he doesn’t trust her. Not with the cafe. Not to interact with the _regulars_.

Sure, when it comes to social skills Futaba will be the first to admit she’s not one to talk. But if you leave strangers alone with Futaba, it’ll be the hacker who gets hit by negative status effects from the social awkwardness. Leaving Elizabeth alone with would at the very leave cause an AoE confusion effect. Guaranteed crit.

“Hey,” Left with no other choice, Futaba sidles up to the counter. “You seen Sojiro this morning? Or Akira?”

Elizabeth turns at once to face her and recites: “Good morning, what can I get you!”

She’s wearing an apron and everything.

“… I could go for some information on where all the people who actually live here are? Also, you’ve gotta say that before the customer’s asked you a question. Otherwise it sounds weird and also kind of like you’re taking the piss.”

“Oh, I see.” She nods, like this is completely new information and not at all common sense. Futaba narrows her eyes, her normally fine-tuned sarcasm detector thwarted by the sheer… Elizabethness of this reply. “Sojiro should be back in a minute, he went out to pick up some more vegetables.”

Futaba narrows her eyes. “He gets those delivered. And not today.”

Elizabeth makes a thoughtful noise, almost like the kind of delaying tactic a person who was trying to decide just how much to bullshit you would make. Futaba narrows her eyes, pushing her glasses up her nose for maximum interrogative emphasis.

“Well, there may have been an incident with the ingredients.” Elizabeth admits. “I didn’t realise only part of the raw materials were edible.”

“Can’t argue with that, I only ever cook pot noodles.” Futaba shrugs. “So Sojiro’s out replacing curry makings. Where’s Akira?”

Elizabeth’s expression turns ever grumpier.

Futaba doesn’t know her well, or really at all, but this is basically the only time she’s been in a conversation with the other woman and heard anything other than non-stop chattering, so the non-response stands out.

“Umm. Is everything… okay?”

“He’s with my sisters, playing neatly along with the roles they’re all meant to play.”

So, based on tone of voice alone, the answer to that is ‘no and I’m sulking’.

It takes a bit longer to parse the actual content of her reply. “You… ran away from that place, didn’t you? The… sea of souls, ‘Velvet Room’, weird outer space dreamscape. And Margaret stayed.”

Elizabeth nods, arms crossed over her chest.

About two thirds of Futaba wants to bail on this conversation and go hide in the attic to quadruple-extra-triple-check the calling-card exploit setup is still ready to fire at will.

That seems wrong though. Elizabeth is important to their adventure. She’s probably got a quest to give them, if they can only win her trust. Or something. Wait, what was it Makoto was saying the other day about it being creepy to gameify social interactions like this?

Whatever: her curiosity about what the hell the Velvet Room is even doing burns like fire. And in any case, from a pragmatic point of view, she should definitely make friends with Elizabeth, because that way there’d finally be someone in her life even less good at impersonating a normal human being than she and Inari are. 

With that noble goal in mind, Futaba hops up to sit at the bar and through a gargantuan effort of will leaves her laptop closed and does not pull out her phone.

“Anyway, never mind that. Would you like a coffee?”

Futaba accepts the offer and is duly granted a cup. It’s not Sojiro-quality, but it’s warm and contains caffeine and is therefore welcome in her life.

The customers are quiet. Elizabeth stays in one place, expression back to neutral but twitchy and on edge in a way her sister never seems to be. Futaba puts in a weird and unreasonable level of effort to stay looking politely-interested-ish instead of like she’s deeply fascinated by the whole weird situation.

Having the coffee to sip helps. She likes the smell of it, and stirring sugar in is a good way to avoid eye contact.

“Margaret believes in our duty as attendants of the Velvet Room above anything else.” Elizabeth says quietly.

Futaba hears this but does not really register it. She’s distracted by the capslocking excitable part of her mind that’s going: wow it really is true, Akira was right, you really can just sit quietly when someone has something on their mind and they’ll talk to you!

“I used to believe in that duty as well. How could I not? It was the only purpose we knew when we were created. We were aware the world that you know as reality existed, but it felt as abstract to us as a dream.”

Elizabeth closes her eyes, opens the clenched fists her hands were in to set them flat on the bar in front of her. It’s the first time Futaba’s seen her without a grin or a pout or some kind of deliberate, exaggerated expression on her face, and she doesn’t look old, exactly, but she looks tired.

“As attendants, we are not permitted to interfere with the lives of our guests. We are observers, doomed to be stay passive observers of the world outside the Room. I followed those rules, and it meant knowingly watching a person I cared for walk down a path to his doom.”

“… Well, that sucks.” Futaba says. “Sorry.”

“We set him up. We doomed him. The only options left open to him were to die for no reason or to sacrifice everything for a future he’d never get to see. I was so, so angry about it, and because of that I left, and I’ve been wandering ever since.”

She tilts her head, smiles just a little, then puts a hand on her chest like she’s making a promise: “I, Elizabeth, will make my own future.”

Futaba nods. She knows this one, actually: you’ve gotta break away from the status quo to decide how you actually want your own life to look. Although for her, it involved less in the way of epic quests and more staying up until 3am finding the best way to blackmail her foster-father’s new tenant.

Still. She gives her fellow rebel a lopsided smile and says: “Congrats.”

“Congrats?” Head-tilt. Voice back from serious to the slightly lilting chirp she introduces herself with.

“Y’know, ‘congratulations’. It’s internet-speak.”

She stirs her coffee, thinking how to say it better.

“It… honestly it sounds pretty screwed up to me that you were made for the purpose of doing one job in one place and nothing else. So I’m glad you decided to walk out, and I would be even if it wasn’t for the guy you knew dying.

Futaba makes herself look up from her coffee. “It… a while back, some idiots I didn’t know lied to me and made me feel responsible for something that wasn’t my fault. It took me years to get over that, even when I had all the evidence to know otherwise, and Sojiro on my side trying to help. I was trapped thinking those things despite all the evidence otherwise. So you must be really strong, to do the same when there’s no-one to help you.”

Is that okay? It’s 100% true, definitely, but Elizabeth looks surprised – not that play-acting ‘oh my’ thing she does, either. The expression in those odd amber eyes is all soft and unguarded and oh god Futaba hasn’t put enough levels into charisma to have this serious of a conversation with anyone outside Sojiro or Akira _what the hell will she do if this almost complete stranger starts crying._

But no. Elizabeth’s expression turns into a wry little smile, and she reaches out to take hold of Futaba’s hand on the counter. She squeezes it gently.

“Thank you.”

Ten minutes later when Sojiro get back and reverses in through the cafe door with two armfuls of bags, Futaba has fled to a corner and is hidden herself behind her laptop, but she feels happy and embarrassed and proud of herself.

* * *

The kids are plotting something. It’s offensively obvious. Futaba’s holed up in the corner and hunched over her laptop with her serious hacking face on, and when Akira reappears he scoots over to the hacker to hold a quiet little conference. The two of them sit there, phones out, with an air of pre-mission-focus that you’d be a fool to mistake for anything else.

It’s interesting that his newest shop helper doesn’t seem to be in on it, whatever the damn-fool plot is. He hasn’t figured out exactly what connection she and her ever-growing little crew have with the Phantom Thieves, but today isn’t helping: she looks like there’s something going on with her, but it’s a different kind of cagey and restless.

Not that Sojiro wants to know. He’s just not sure if it’s safe to ignore it.

Around half eleven, Futaba pounces him for a hug and then scuttles out with Akira. Sojiro sighs. Times like this put the whole smoke-free interior rule to the test something fierce.

Coffee appears in front of him.

“You’re worried for them.”

“No shit.” He sticks his hands in his pockets to the urge to chew on his pen. Unhygienic, that. “I really thought I was done with the part of my life where I had to worry about the idiots I care about putting their lives on the line.”

“Oh?”

“This whole cognitive world business killed Futaba’s mother. That prick Shido did his best to kill Akira. I can’t blame the two of them for wanting to pick a fight right back, god knows I’ve gone down that road myself, but still…”

She nods, like she gets it.

“I’m such a coward. I keep telling them I don’t want to know, but times like these I want to grab Futaba and shake her and make her stay put.” He shakes his head. “I won’t – I told them I’d trust them to take care of themselves and I meant it. But you might have to do me a favour and smack me upside the head if you see me havering on that.”

“You have my word.”

Sojiro doesn’t really understand why, but he believes her.

“What about you?”

She looks up, surprised at his question.

“It seems nearly as rude to ask a lady about her past as to ask her age, but it does seem like you’re in deep with this stuff. So why are you staying here and keeping an old geezer like me company?”

“Some people would say it is their battle to fight. I don’t really agree, but I do think it might set off some alarms if my siblings and I jump in.” Elizabeth says. “This conflict with that politician is part of a bigger game, and your daughter had the wit to see that, and then from there to notice the game was rigged. So she came to find Margaret.”

“That so, is it.”

“… You look angry.”

“Gotta tell you, Liz, I don’t like the idea of you talking about what these kids are up to as a game.”

She outright laughs at that. The flare of anger that hits Sojiro makes him snarl before his brain catches up with the expression on her face. There’s… a lot going on there.

“I told you I walked out of my last job without notice, didn’t I?”

Well, geez. What to even say to that.

“Shit, ain’t that a bit of a step down, going from pulling the strings of fate to a failing coffee shop in the sticks?”

“Not at all. I haven’t found these so-called sticks yet, but coming here has taught me a lot about humanity.” Pause. “ _You’ve_ taught me a lot.”

Sojiro scratches his beard. So: she’s part of some ‘bigger game’ that thinks of Shido as a playing piece, and she ditched it to come do what – cheerlead? To enjoy learning about humanity over coffee and affable silence?

His take on her the day she first came by wasn’t even too far off: she’s kind of isolated and lonely, and mixed up with the same spooky shit even deeper than the kids and Wakaba. That sister of hers plays calm and collected like it’s second nature, and if it’s an act he’s not spotted the cracks in it yet, but Elizabeth seems glib on the surface and brittle underneath.

He genuinely does like this kid, damn it. She’s so charmed by the café despite understanding literally nothing at all about how kitchens work. She’s got that edge of anger at the world Akira’s gang have, honed by a few years of trying and hitting a wall. She’s… urgh, still looking at him with a kind of sincere, straightforward fondness that makes him think of Futaba at around age six, like she’s never actually talked about any of this nonsense out loud to another human being.

Honestly.

“Hmph. Fine. I’ll be relying on you to keep whatever your weird ex-colleagues are up to under control. Those kids are smart and tough, but they’re just kids.”

She nods: “I promise, Sojiro-san.”

“Well, good. Now come help me with these, and I’ll talk you through it. Wouldn’t want you turning anyone else’s veg into purée with the packaging still on.”

But before they can, there’s a crackle and a static hiss from the news playing in the background, and it becomes unfortunately clear what the kids are up to.

* * *

It stays quiet all the way to the assembly hall. They scurry from safe room to safe room, only picking off the very few shadows they can’t avoid. At the last one, Akira makes sure everyone’s set up okay for weapons, armour, all healed up and doing OK on energy, and then asks.

“Still no sign of our runaway Crow?”

“It’s weird. I’ve seen something that looks a little like him on scan, but I can’t get a read on it. It reads almost like a shadow.”

“Huh.” They all remember the cognitive Akira. But they all know Akechi’s got more reason than anyone outside this room to want a stake in Shido’s downfall.

“Keep watching out for him. Oracle, even when we engage the palace ruler, we need you to watch our backs: pass over battle support to Mona if you’ve gotta choose between one or the other.”

“You got it.”

They make their way onward, Akira with one group in the lead, Futaba following in Prometheus with the second. They stop at the lift to the Assembly Chamber.

“Looks like Shido’s in there with the treasure. We won’t get away without fighting him.”

Akira nods. They expected as much.

“Still can’t figure out Akechi. Shido’s cognitions are almost like real people, so...”

“Then we go.” He tells them, voice fierce. “We can do this.”

They take the lift up, and Shido’s waiting on a podium. Joker almost laughs: they’re back here, are they? The low-life and the man in a suit, a year or so on.

This time they’re fighting over the whole of Japan, but Shido still doesn’t even turn to look them in the eyes.

“Where did a pack of thugs like you pick up this power?” Then: “Not that it matters to me. Speak, petitioners.”

“Masayashi Shido.” Fox says. “We have come to excise your distorted desires.”

“Oh, I see.” Shido snaps his fingers.

And Akechi steps out from behind the curtain to his side, brushing his hair back from his unmasked face.

“Cognition?” Joker mouths, taking eyes off their target for just long enough to throw a glance at their navigator. She nods, dropping back from the group to summon her persona back.

“Shoot to kill.” Shido tells him.

The cognitive Akechi blinks once, then puts its gun to its own head and fires.

Everything stops for a second. The thieves, poised to fight, have frozen in shock; Shido stays relaxed behind his podium, one hand resting on its carved wooden surface.

Then the floor of the Palace reaches up in red and black shadow-stuff to embrace Akechi, and their opponent is remade in the flesh of the cognitive world: he becomes a marionette-assassin, hanging from wires like a puppet, wearing a suit and an earbud like a CIA goon in a movie, but childish, gawky, his eyes too big for his face and his sleeves too long for his teenage body.

He’s pointing a gun right at Joker, of course.

“He’s your son, you absolute piece of shit.” Skull roars, voice filling the whole huge assembly hall.

“By orders of our next prime minister…” The cognitive Akechi says, in a perfect copy of that fake TV-personality voice of his. “Pray do me the honour of dying.”

“Dodge!” Oracle screams.

Akira tries to, realises he’s moving too slow even as Panther shoves him aside. He feels the impact as the bullet hits her body. Her fingers twitch; she’s down.

“Shield! Shield physical!” Oracle yells as Akechi shoots again. Someone – Skull? – yells something over her, but he doesn’t hear it.

He hasn’t heard their navigator this panicked since the first day she joined them. He draws Girimehkala to the front of his mind, still crouched on the wooden floor next to Panther.

“Joker’s good!” Oracle instructs. Noir’s defended herself; she moves to shield Mona next as the cat casts samerecarm to revive their fallen ally.

Akechi shoots again, the deadly attack deflected off into the wall by Noir’s shield even as the shield shatters, then shifts gear, summoning a group of enemies. Four of them: Baphomet, Forneus, Sarasvati, Hanuman.

The thieves have been caught on the back foot, but moving to the offensive now feels premature. Joker casts delibitate to weaken their foes’ defenses, glances over to check on Panther as Mona’s healing magic hits her.

And she’s… staggering, eyes bleeding black, teeth pulled back in a snarl.

Fuck. Of course: they’re not fighting the real Akechi they battled yesterday. The real Shido doesn’t understand how his pet assassin kills people, he knows whatever Akechi’s told him fixed with what he sees on TV.

The cognitive Akechi can do whatever Shido believes he can.

The next few minutes are a panicked rush of getting everyone shielded against Akechi’s devastating gun attack, chipping down the allies, and testing out what can hurt Akechi (physical attacks do very little, nuclear and psychic are reasonable but nothing special), and then them realising the Akechi-puppet can cure himself.

Joker waits until they’ve cut down three of Akechi’s four allies, then calls for their navigator’s attention: “Shido’s up to something.”

Their real foe has been busy on his stage: he’s called a few different allies up from behind the daruma-painted curtains. In short: he’s up to something, and relying his fake Akechi as a distraction.

“Split the party?” Oracle sounds worried.

“I don’t like it, but...”

The Akechi marionette raises one hand in a jerky movement. Shadowstuff pools around it, then three more minions grow out of the wooden panelled floor, red and black melting back into the ground as they find their feet.  
  
“Who goes where?”

Joker’s mind races: the fake Akechi’s gun is lowered; there’ll be half a moment before the new foes are ready to strike. He draws a hand across his mask, calls the dragon Seth up to get a hit against Narcissus with agidyne.

Narcissus staggers back into an ally, and the thieves press their advantage. Joker boosts their speed.

His mind’s racing: the cognitive Akechi’s eyes are unfocused, haven’t met his even once during this fight. They’re twisted with almost exactly the spite and fury the team saw yesterday fighting the real thing.

So Shido had known about that side of him.

“Noir here for tetrakarn. Me with the other team because we don’t know what Shido’s got.” He stops talking to strike down a newly summoned Sarasvati before she can cure her allies, then drops back to let Fox finish it off.

“Noir gets Queen, Fox, you stay and direct them. I take Skull, Panther, Mona.”

Three people and their stronger navigator against this terrifying fake Akechi and however many allies he can summon. They’ll have it tough. No other choice though. They need to tackle Shido, but the thought of leaving half the team to fight alone makes his stomach twist with worry.

Akechi casts whatever spell he’s prepared: black and red distortion swims up around each of the shadows they’re fighting.

“Shit!” Prometheus swoops in overhead, “that’s the berserk spell!”

She boosts their defenses as Forneus casts a souped-up mapsiodyne. The psychic blast knocks Queen to her knees, and Fox barely dodges the fire attack that follows. They’re been tearing the palace guards to shreds pretty easily, but any one of these summoned ones are as tough as the palace letter-keeper shadows with Akechi’s power-up.

Joker vaults out the way of an attack. “New plan! No splitting up, we need to take Akechi down.”

“Just allow me one moment.”

The white light of mahamaon flares, taking down two of the Akechi marionette’s four minions. The marionette looks past the thieves, expression blank.

A second Akechi approaches slowly, Robin Hood still hovering at his side: “Thieves. Would you do me the honour of letting me fight by your side once more?”

“Shit, man, we’ll take all the help we can get!” Skull says.

Akira just nods.

“In that case...” Akechi dispels his persona, expression turning grim. “I’ll admit I was holding out on you.”

And then he laughs, unhinged enough to make Akira worry for a second, and charges straight towards his double, eerie red fire flicking around him.

Akira’s grateful for the last few months of practice being The Calm Leaderly One. This version of Akechi is scarier than the cognitive one by a long way: it takes a conscious effort to push his reaction behind Joker's poise and confidence. He sure as hell isn’t leaving half the team alone with their dangerous new situational ally unless he’s in that half.

“OK. Well, new plan mark two: now we split up. Noir, Oracle, Skull, Mona, Panther, take Shido down. We’ll join you when we can.” He pauses for a breath: “You can do it.”

The better part of the group take off up the podium, and Akira, Makoto and Yusuke don’t know what to do but watch as Akechi screams like a banshee and smashes his cognitive counterpart to the ground, straddling him with wild eyes as the red mask he wears melts and reshapes itself to a dark visor.

* * *

Everything is fire and fury and pain and that stupid, pointless, sting of betrayal. The puppet strings holding the fake up are sharp as razors, leaving deep marks across his arms where he bore the fake down to the ground.

Of course Shido would think of him as some kind of pathetic toy. Of course.

 _Unfavoured child, rise up and claim your place_ , Loki had said, years ago now. He will. He’s been waiting for an advantage for so long, trying to play the long game and strike from the shadows like the trickster-god that Loki represents.

Being forced into this public show of strength is a failure in itself in a lot of ways, but Akechi hadn’t been able to bear this mockery of him putting up a better fight than he had himself yesterday.

 _This might the the last thing I ever do… but I refuse to regret it!_ Akechi pulls his fist back to punch Shido’s smug, stupid, obedient little pet version of him. Its head twitches, unhinged grin seeming to grow and grow.

Loki laughs in his mind. Almost mocking. And there’s almost an edge of warning in that laugh. Akechi sees his alter ego’s hand move at waist height – a flash of colour – it’s still holding a sidearm!

Just in time, spell-light flickers over him. The shot ricochets off a barrier – tetrakarn! – and a bloom of red appears on the cognitive Akechi’s sweatervest.

“Loki.” Akechi summons with gritted teeth, only realising too late that his persona can’t spellcast or strike with him so close. And he’s blocking the others’ line of fire on the cognition. He stumbles blindly back, persona vanishing back into the ether. He feels more than sees the thieves move in besides him. Some rescue that was.

“We finish this quickly.” Joker is ordering. “Queen, defense boost, then nuke it. Fox, keep the cognition on the defensive. I’ll heal, yell if you need it.”

Loki’s sword blow hits before their foe can gets back to his feet, and Fox jumps in with a flurry of quicker, lighter strikes. The thieves find the tempo of the battle easier this time than they had while Akechi watched, and they seem to have their foe’s measure: they chain attacks and move together smoothly enough that the cognition never manages to summon a new set of allies.

One by one, they sever the puppet strings holding the fake up, until the frame it’s hanging from melts away entirely.

Cognitive Akechi looks pathetic. More human than any shadow outside Mementos. After the last hit from freidyne, it’s shaking, blood running from his nose and ears, eyes shot through with fear.

At last, the fake drops its gun, looking up at them from one knee.

Real Akechi looks aside.

“Hand me your weapons.” Queen has no such problems. “And get out of here.”

“Understood.” Akechi hears it say. His real voice isn’t that thin and reedy. It can’t be.

“What’s Shido’s plan?” Joker asks it.

It laughs, ever so polite: “Oh, I’m not privy to that information about our Prime Minister-to-be, of course.”

“As you say.” Fox says. “We need to move!”

So they do: they run and climb up to the roof of the ship, where Shido is riding on a lion built of his constituents. Using people. He’s all about using people. Of course he would be. Mona is down; as they approach, Akira summons some kind of really weird clock-statue persona to revive him, and Makoto doesn’t even stop moving as she follows this up by healing everyone.

The refreshing green light of mediarahan hits Akechi, but he still feels off, some mix of triumph and shame and fury roiling in his gut. Why did they spare the cognition?

Then they close the distance between them and Shido, and it’s time to put those feelings aside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me writing the first half of this fight scene: how the hell do you even write the game mechanic of ‘strong physical attacks reduce your HP?’, jRPG battle systems are so weird!  
> me picking it up right after sparring time with my taekwondo crew: right, the more showy bullshit you try to pull off, the quicker you end up too worn out to keep fighting. that makes perfect sense.
> 
> On Akechi... this is less fic about Akechi moving on from the bundle of fury and betrayal and spite he's living in and more a fic where I realised this story needed the Shido palace treasure run in it and went HEY WE COULDA HAD SUCH A COOL MESSED UP AKECHI BOSS FIGHT.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thieves fight Shido. Sojiro can't quite believe how used to all this cognitive nonsense he's gotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive this chapter being less carefully copyedited than normal, folks - it's been a busy busy week for me, I'm off to the other side of the world for work tomorrow, and I wanted to get this edited up and posted before I headed out.

The fight starts out the same as the others they’ve fought against palace rulers: the ruler is an unknown, the battleground is shaped to give it an advantage, and the start of the game is to figure out how to turn its own quirks against it.

At the end of the day, it’s just a shadow, and Futaba’s got very good at reading those since August.

Shido, egotistical fucking creep that he is, has a shadow that rides around on a lion made from the vacantly staring bodies of his followers. The lion’s huge, and it keeps Shido himself out of reach. They decide to try and cut the statue-looking thing down to size: physical strikes and gunshots bounce off, but even with only half the team, their persona’s elemental attacks are up to the challenge. By the time their leader arrives with the other half of the team (plus one detective guilty of multiple counts of attempted Akira-murder), Shido’s lion has grown itself some wings and started flapping around alarmingly so it can dodge better. Like that, it’s much harder to land a blow, but when it swoops down low to hit back they get a chance to hit the cape-wearing asshole.

“What’s working, Oracle?”

“No elemental magic, he sees it coming and dodges. Shoot him, or use your persona’s physical attacks when he comes in close.”

Haru does exactly that, Milady’s skirts pulling back to reveal her heavy artillery.

The lion rears up in protest, flings back freidyne at her; Makoto dodges in to intercept the hit.

“Skull, raise our attack! Fox, evasion! Then start hitting him.” Joker instructs, then attacks himself.  
  
“Megido skills?” Joker asks her, with a nod of his head at Akechi – aw, damn, she’s gotta track him now too.

Futaba sizes him up. Akechi’s outfit’s changed: no longer foppish, still way overdramatic; his ringmaster outfit has become a blue-and-dark-grey bodysuit with a helmet that covers almost his whole face. This is that great unknown ‘black mask’, then.

She’s got some things to say about that, but it can wait. For now: professionalism, Oracle. She’ll be as professional as any black hat hackers turned UFO-riding tactician could be.

Look at Shido. No empirical data yet. Based on her projections: “I think they’ll do the job!”

“Crow, get on that.”

Akechi nods, summons – this is a different persona than they’ve seen him use before. Black and white, horns growing out from where its eyes should be, it’s almost as creepy as some of Joker’s collection of horrorshow creatures, but with that bonus extra soupçon of creepiness from being an actual a product of his own subconscious mind.

Thinking about that can wait. Oracle pulls her view back from their newest ally and gets her eyes on the whole team.

* * *

The winged lion isn’t too bad; it’s sturdy, but predictable. The pyramid that comes after it has some nasty hard-hitting charged attacks, but moves slower. Neither throw the thieves off as much as the cognitive Akechi had, and even though the fight draws out long, there’s genuine confidence building up behind the deliberate show of it Akira puts on as Joker.

At long last Shido’s shadow drops to the ground, his golden edifice vanished. He reverts back to his normal clothes, yellow eyes behind those glasses.

“Interesting choice of allies, little robber.”

Have they defeated him, Joker wonders, moving to the front of the team. Hostile shadows don’t normally change back to normal-looking humans until they’re down and out, but Shido hadn’t ever fully transformed, just got a change of outfit and a pet.

“You used a schoolkid as an assassin.” Panther snarls, “Damn straight we’ll side with him over you!”

“Ah, the enemy of my enemy is your friend, is he?”

“Our friends are none of your effin’ business, you piece of shit.”

“Hah! As if the opinions of lowlifes like you matter. The people of Japan have trusted me to steer this country!” He holds his hands wide open, that ever-so-trustworthy charismatic smile blooming on his face. “No, thieves. It is a shame that my little Goro-chan couldn’t be trusted with this, but if push comes to shove, I suppose I can clean up this mess alone.”

“God you’re a tool!” Ryuji spat. “Don’t call him cute names, you literally just said you didn’t know for sure he was your kid until we told you.”

“Be that as it may.” Shido places his hands together, and his smile turns mean. “God has chosen me to rule. I’m not letting you brats interfere!”

And two statues like clenched fists rise from either side of the deck of him, lines of red crawling out from them along the floor in patterns like veins towards Shido.

“Now, attack!” Akira calls. He can’t say what he thinks will happen if the marks reach Shido, but he’d be very happy to never find out.

The thieves strike.

* * *

Margaret sits at a rough-hewn stone table on the empty island that rose above the sea of souls.

There is a book placed carefully next to her right hand. There are three cards face-down in front of her.

She does not move to turn the cards. Taking on Igor’s role – rearranging and changing those pieces of Akira’s mind they refer to as personas – took all her attention in a way she hadn’t expected. It makes sense: the boy is almost a stranger still, and she is skilled at her role but was never intended to act as the sole proprietor of this place.

It is interesting, though, how different humans can be. How different the guests of the Velvet Room can be, even, lonely children on the cusp of adulthood all, all reaching out to build friends and a future – but still all so distinct. Such different futures and possibilities latent around them.

There is a quiet pride in her to be able to guide them – but more and more now, Margaret finds herself balancing that against the voice of Elizabeth in her mind, her sister’s fierce sense of her own purpose.

Her question, drawing the cards spread in front of her, had been: is my purpose to stay here?

The longer she waits here, the deeper a certainty grow in her mind that this was the wrong thing to ask.

Lavenza, quiet and solemn beside her, makes a little questioning sound.

Margaret shuts her eyes. Two paths shine bright in her mind. There is the road Elizabeth has turned off towards, her heart shining with enthusiasm for the human world, reaching out to take hold of its people, always so quick to jump in and explore. And then there is the path she herself has stayed on: taking up the tools of her master, fulfilling a role in a great system she understands only a small part of.

The residents of the Velvet Room are ageless, more or less, but Lavenza is young nonetheless. It’s hard to know what to say to her.

“We say that everyone’s fate is in the cards,” Margaret says at last, “but I find that I am not used to thinking of myself as someone whose fate is in flux.”

Lavenza nods, a little unsure still.

“Still, it does not matter yet. We will challenge this imposter, and rescue our master.”

And then… my sister and I will talk.

She shuffles the cards back into their deck unseen and opens a door back to Yongen-Jaya. Time to find Elizabeth and see how their thief and rebel allies are doing on their mission.

* * *

 

The fight goes downhill quickly: now he’s down on the same level as them, Shido is strong and uncannily fast, striking and evading and charging quickly enough that the thieves can’t press the advantage in numbers they have.

Whenever one of them steps on the red patterns creeping across the floor, they freeze, struck down by fear, and can’t move until someone cures the ailment. Which wouldn’t be such a big issue if the lines of symbols didn’t keep moving.

And when Shido stands on them, the lines of red light on the floor flare bright for a second and the thieves can see how intricate and branching they are, like blood veins. Something in his expression turns mean and triumphant.

“Some kinda dirty haxx going on there,” Oracle feeds in, “Those lights just healed him.”

He stays on top of the lines when he can, and the thieves keep trying to chase him off them. It’s out of instinct, but Makoto doesn’t like just how different this feels to the rest of the palace. Akira doesn’t either, she thinks – he’s pushing them hard to keep Shido away from the weird patterns.

Shido’s very fast indeed though, and eventually he knocks them all down, and rather than following up the attack he just stands still between those two hand-statues. The patterns on the floor glow bright, crawling over his immaculate brogues and curling their way up around his legs like vines. His magic starts hitting harder, and smarter, too: he strikes each thief in range with their elemental weakness.

“Goddamn, they set him up with a full set of ‘kaja spells too. Get ‘em off him, Noir.”

“Pathetic.” He tells Akechi, when the detective is the only one in close still on his feet. “Compliant little fool. You came into your rebellion too late. It holds nothing for you now.”

Makoto doesn’t like this: the politician had been despicable, but in a way she more or less understood. Now his voice has changed: the casual charisma is gone and his words buzz bone-deep with threats.

“I’m not gonna lie, I think he’s a real piece of work.” Skull, moving to take point and stalling for time as Noir cures Mona’s shock. “But we thieves are in the business of changing hearts, not telling people their good deeds came too late.”

“I know you, empty one.” Shido continues talking to Akechi as if he hadn’t even heard Ryuji’s words, moving slowly but inexorably towards their tentative ally.

“These ‘thieves’ are your antithesis. They are the perversion of everything you believe about justice.”

Akechi snarls, charges head down with that ridiculous laser-sword.

Shido steps in towards him, one hand on his son’s inner arm, and flings him head over heels in what Makoto can’t help but admire as a beautiful use of momentum against an attacker.

He turns his back to the rest of the thieves to rest a foot on Akechi’s chest.

“You have failed me.” The sound of a crack from Akechi’s ribs. Makoto draws her gun, glancing at Oracle to indicate she’ll wait for a signal. The accusation fits with what they knew of the two of them, until his next words: “You failed to hold fast against the trickster.”

Akechi makes a choked sound, blood on his lips. No more time for analysis: Futaba’s voice calls go in their minds and they open fire.

Akira skips back just half a foot from their fallen ally, throws an area-wide ice spell out, and Yusuke calls Goemon to retaliate while Morgana gets Akechi back standing, the samurai’s blade arcing out with lethal speed.

Shido takes a single step aside, one eyebrow raised, hands held loose at his sides. The blow misses, Goemon fading out and leaving a gouge three inches deep in the deck. Haru’s dekaja takes, though, and Shido doesn’t manage to dodge the next attack. He barely flinches at it, though – just brushes one hand over his eyes to clear the ice crystals from them.

“You have also failed me,” Shido says, stepping towards Akira. “Your ingenuity in finding those naive little sisters is impressive, but you have wandered off the path of rehabilitation.”

Their leader goes very still in the way the way of a big cat preparing to pounce. Then he smiles, blue flames licking across his gloves and mask. “Please do introduce yourself, imposter. We have some questions.”

Shido raises a hand to his chest, light trailing in its wake the only sign this wasn’t a normal gesture. Some kind of buff. Then he moves again, flicking two fingers out towards Joker.

Joker flips aside, coat flaring out in an invisible rush of force, then touches down on his knees and springs to one side, shooting three neat holes in Shido’s suit jacket.

The being inhabiting the politician laughs, red lines reaching up and over his clothes to knit the fabric back together. He claps his hands together once, and Makoto’s forward momentum stops at once (red lines pulse like arteries under her feet). Joker hangs in the air, foot a hair’s breadth from the ground, then touches down for a second (red crackles with lightning as he lands, the soles of his shoes smoke) and somersaults away to land on atop of Prometheus as it swoops in towards him.

Shido’s face wears something that only superficially resembles a smile. “Such a pointless struggle! Shido told you, didn’t he? He was honoured to be chosen by a god.”

“Oracle!” Makoto hisses. “We need options. How do we turn this around?”

“I… I think we’re underlevelled for this one.” Oracle admits, voice tight. “Whatever we go for, it’ll be a bit of a stab in the dark.”

“You’ve been playing some kind of game here,” Akira speaks up, perched like a gargoyle. “Akechi against me, each one of us given the Metaverse app and the power to fight. Why?”

“So many reasons.” - Shido tells Joker, casting ziodyne at Mona - “A test” - and bufudyne at Panther - “A trial.” - agidyne at Fox - “Judgement” - freidyne at Noir - “You could even say, a game.” - and with a laugh and a wave of his hand, they hear the eerie whine of an impending megidoloan buzzing through the air.

“Guard!” Oracle yelled. The four Shido had just struck had no chance, still off balance from the attacks against their weaknesses, but Makoto just about manages to brace for impact as a blinding crackle of light rises around them.

The impact is bad: Makoto’s still standing, but she’s blind and disoriented by the explosion. And – shit, Shido’s eyes are on her – a second later, psiodyne strikes.

* * *

 

“Fuck fuck fuckity fucksicles. This is bad, really really really bad, we need to bail ASAP.”

Futaba’s hands fly over her console. It’s taking a massive effort to keep them steady. Sometimes being the one in the back with not much other than encouragement to offer really sucks. Especially when no-one can hear your warnings.

Joker is up, but weak: he’d managed to stay onboard as she dodged. Queen’s down and out. Akechi held out through Shido’s horrifying chain attack but the idiot hardly seems to have noticed the downed teammates around him – doesn’t he realise the others need curing?

No, that’s not fair. His persona didn’t have healing skills, and he never does seem to carry any curative items. And he’s holding Shido’s attention, just about, while Joker revives Mona to help get the team back up faster.

Tip the balance for us on this, Crow, and maybe I’ll give you a second chance.

* * *

They’re losing. Decisively. They’re being toyed with. Joker knows it and hates it; he’s slipped deep into battle-calm-focus mode and he’s fighting well, but he’s the only one of the team who can hold the line against Shido’s power and range of offensive options, and that only barely. Akechi should be able to, but he’s not working with the team, launching berserker attacks when he sees a window instead of timing with the others.

Futaba thinks they need to run. Leaving without Shido’s treasure is a bad option, but it’s looking like the only one.

“You’re right. Plan: last surprise.” Joker tells her, casting sukunda to lower their enemy’s speed. It’d last a minute at most before he countered it, but: “Akechi, follow my lead!”

“Everyone else, on my mark.” Futaba commands. It had been one of the anti-Akechi strategies they’d talked over for Sae’s palace, before they’d finalised the fake getaway.

Akechi reacts to Joker’s cue, drops back, a hand raised ready to draw Loki forward into being. Futaba boosts everyone’s speed and defense, pulls up a map out of the palace.

“Now!” Futaba orders. Joker leaps forward as the rest of the team flee, striking with Black Rider’s megidola and seeing it hit home. Akechi follows up with Loki’s powerful laevatein attack, and Shido actually staggers for a second.

And the sound of Mona’s car form’s engine means it’s time to make their own bid for freedom.

“Seth!” Joker calls, and drags Akechi along as he leaps onto the dragon-like persona’s back.

It should – in theory – work. Personas are about as much like physical beings as their shadow counterparts are: they phase in and out of solidity, they’re shaped by cognition. Just their wielder’s cognition rather than a palace ruler’s. Joker, right now, believes pretty hard that Seth is going to obey this palace’s gravity and stay 100% tangible while they’re on its back.  
  
Akechi clings, eyes wide in barely suppressed panic under his mask. They swoop down over the swimming pool, over the stacks of the engine room, all the while hearing that not-the-real-Shido voice follow them (it sounds way too close) with something about failures and rehabilitation and humanity something something despair and disorder.

And then they’ve nearly cleared the main body of the ship, the whole wall melts into red-black raw shadowstuff and rises up in a huge impassable wall ahead of them, hiding the front deck from view.

“Loki! Negative pile!” Akechi yells, too loud and too close to Joker’s ear. The arm the detective hasn’t needed to stop clinging with locks itself in an even tighter death grip. Loki appears ahead of them in the air, falling towards the obstruction, and slices top to bottom with that oversized sword, then flickers out in a flare of static and snapped chains as its trajectory takes it too far from its summoner.

Their path to the deck is clear, and as they get near ground level, the doors that open onto it from the main hall explodes (he suspects Noir’s heavy artillery), and the Mona-mobile bounces through the rubble as Seth lands, the two sets of thieves racing towards the bow of the ship.

Joker doesn’t dare look back, but he’s sure Shido is in the air behind them, his voice distorted beyond a normal shadow’s now.

It sounds… like Igor, who hadn’t ever been the real Igor. “No. Your feeble attempts end here.”

And lines of red symbols cover every piece of the palace Joker can see, and then glow bright and turn black.

Everything in sight shatters like glass, the path ahead of them shatters, the deck shatters and starts falling towards the water under Mona’s wheels –

– and then they hear a light, almost joking ‘tsk’, the sound carrying perfectly despite the crash and clatter of a ship the size of a small city collapsing. A bridge of ice grows out from the bow where they exit the palace, freezing a path up to Mona’s current position.

At the far end of it, Jack Frost just fading back out of sight behind her, Elizabeth takes a bow.

Behind her is a blue outline, not a door so much as a van-sized rift in this reality hanging open in the air.

She smiles, looks up beyond the pair riding Seth, and shakes her head: “I think you’ll find they do not.”

And Mona skids through it, and Seth lands in a more-or-less controlled crash and fades out a foot away. Elizabeth catches both riders as if they weigh nothing and lifts them safely through.

* * *

 

The kids reappear in LeBlanc in a hopeless tangle. Futaba’s curled up like a pillbug, Makoto’s got both arms around Morgana in a death grip, the artist one immediately staggers to his feet, pale, then trips over the bleach-blond (Ryuji, wasn’t it?) and causes another spate of hopeless flailing.

“Kids,” Sojiro starts to say, but he really can’t find any appropriate words.

“Who’s this one?” Margaret, still standing between him and an unconscious pair of Shido’s minions, has focused in on… well, shit. That looks a whole lot like Goro Akechi.

The teenager in question pulls himself up to a neat kneeling position. He sure is young to be able to switch on that bland well-mannered television personality schtick at will.

“Margaret, Elizabeth, this is Akechi.” Makoto says, coming over to the counter to try and get Sojiro and the three outsiders into view at once. She’d look almost composed if her hair wasn’t sticking up like porcupine spines and she wasn’t breathing like she’d run a marathon.

Margaret’s at the door, Elizabeth’s nearer the stairs up to the attic. The tiny, doll-like youngest sister is sat in a booth in the corner, hands folded neatly in her lap.

Sojiro doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that between the three of them they’re covering all the exits, nor does he miss the way that as the kids get up, they spread out in a loose circle around Akechi.

“He’s Masayoshi Shido’s unacknowledged son,” Makoto continues, “and we had considered him an enemy. But he fought beside us in the palace.”

“Tried his damn best to kill the kid, though.” Sojiro adds, jerking his head to indicate Akira.

Margaret tilts her head. She takes a step in closer to Akechi, reaches a hand out and carefully raises his chin up until he’s meeting her eyes. It’s a gesture that could easily look motherly, but there’s something clinical in her movements. The boy detective makes fists with his hands. It might be the situation as a whole, but the cafe owner would put money down that her air of calm authority is putting him on edge.

“I see.” Margaret says, then lets him go with no further explanation. She looks over the rest of the crew and bows. “It is a pleasure to meet you all.”

“Uh. Pleased to…. meetcha?” Ryuji says. “Sorry, that was a… pretty wild ride just then.” Then, to Elizabeth: “Thanks for the save, there, lady.”

“Oh, any time.” Elizabeth says, triumph glinting in her eyes.

Sojiro feels approximately thirty years too old for everything that’s happened in the last two weeks. Or the last six months. Or really since Wakaba – well.

“So. Siddown. Let me make you all drinks. Which one of you wants to explain what just happened? From this whole kidnapping attempt that happened here just now, I’m guessing Shido’s not planning to stay subtle about going after any of us any more.”

“We… failed.” Makoto said.

Sojiro’s a mean-spirited bastard capable of holding grudges for decades, so of naturally he hasn’t taken an eye off Akechi. The kid hears this and whatever series of thoughts it fires off in his twisty little mind genuinely terrifies him.

“We wanted to – uh, fair warning, to explain this you need to know a bunch of Phantom Thief stuff that’s all weird and kind of metaphorical?” Futaba says. She doesn’t do the teenage uptalk thing that hard unless she’s really nervous.

“Kiddo, I’m used to it by now.” He scruffles her hair affectionately.

That might have been overstating it a bit, it turns out. Between them the kids fill in all the little details they’d been leaving out about the logistics of changing a person’s heart. Palaces, monsters, fighting, the cat becoming a bus, a whole lot of all these specific details about things he can’t get straight in his head – personas? magic spells? treasure?

Margaret, Elizabeth, and the newest and youngest blond-and-blue kid listen with what seems like almost academic interest, as if they’re filling in blanks in a pattern they know well. When they dive off into another tangent about the minutiae of it all, he steps out to heat pot of curry and they rearrange some furniture to fit the whole crowd around the same table.

By the time Ann and Ryuji have made a dessert & snacks run, it all still sounds like the plot of some kind of edgy modern TV show to Sojiro, but the narrative more or less hangs together.

“So the upshot is, you missed your one shot to reform Shido, but that probably isn’t our biggest problem, because this imposter who’s been gunning for the blue crowd’s boss has taken over his brain, and he’s even more serious bad news.”

“He was TERRIFYING. Super OP, nerf plz.” Futaba says, nodding vigorously.

“She means ‘yes’.” Makoto explains.

Sojiro actually knows his daughter’s gamer lingo pretty well by now, thanks. Still: “God I could have gone so much more of my life not thinking about the fact you brats run around in a weird dream dimension trying to set fire to people with your minds.”

“I don’t!” Futaba chirps. “That’s really more Ann’s thing.”

“Not even slightly the point.” Sojiro complains mostly for dramatic effect, but also because the scraps of common sense that he hasn’t deliberately locked away for this conversation are all screaming at him. “It’s even worse that you keep getting into situations where that’s relevant.”

“We’re very sorry for disrupting your place of business this way, Sakura-san.” Haru says (also not even slightly the point). “And for how worried you must have been over these two.”

“Anyway!” Futaba chirps. “Team Velvet Room, Elizabeth’s last minute rescue was sweet as hell, but how did you know to come get us? And I don’t suppose you’re up for, y’know, leading the charge against the evil super-Shido?”

“The imposter left Mementos to pass into Shido’s cognition, and that stood out even from the sea of souls. I assume it was even clearer to Elizabeth from here.” Margaret says.

Elizabeth nods.

“And yes,” Margaret continues, “we will.”

Elizabeth smiles at her sister, bright and relieved.

“The imposter exiled our master to the depths of Mementos.” The third one, the kid, speaks up, voice so soft it sounds timid, expression inhumanly calm. “If we reach him there, we will be able to free him.”

“Your master, this… Igor person.” Akechi says slowly. “Will he challenge the imposter?”

Elizabeth shifts in her seat, expression tense: “He is reluctant to intervene in the affairs of humans, but in this case, our enemy’s very clearly interfering with the natural state of this world.”

“It’s not relevant right now whether our master will intervene.” Margaret says. “I feel no such qualms.”

“So, next steps.” Ann recaps: “Rest up, arm up, then head back to see what remains of Shido’s palace for an all out attack? Or hunt for your missing guy in Mementos while this puppetmaster jerk is off being doing his best Shido impression?”

They talk over options for a while, the pack of kids and the supernatural trio trying to get on the same page, and Sojiro zones out a bit, not really following the discussion. The next Prime Minister of Japan, possessed by some kind of malevolent intelligence, huh? You’d’ve thought it’d be hard to make Shido any worse than he’d already made himself, but the kids seem to think this thing has managed it.

The gathering disperses while he’s still wool-gathering, leaving Sojiro with Akira, the murderous detective, and the smallest and creepiest member of the Velvet Room family. Was family the word? The other two called one another sister. This one has hardly spoken to anyone at all.

Sojiro would have rather dealt with literally any of the rest of his ward’s weird new allies than these two left in the cafe last. Item one: the crooked teen detective staring intensely at Akira. Item two: the silver-blond expressionless girl-child in a fancy dress staring equally intently at the detective. Sojiro’s frame of reference for pre-teen girls is Futaba, pretty much, and this girl – Lavenza, was it? - seems pretty far off from that. Except for a certain similarity in those sad sad eyes.

Akira stretches, yawns, pushes his glasses back up his nose, and looks directly at Akechi for the first time this evening that Sojiro’s noticed.

Akechi meets his gaze.

The girl – Lavenza, was it? – looks between them, expression maybe a little concerned.

Silence reigns. Not the nice comfortable half-ten-and-the-regulars-are-settled-in-for-the-morning kind of silence either.

“So. You’re out of a place to stay, is that it?” Sojiro asks, once it became clear no-one else is going to move the converstation anywhere.

“I… find myself short on options.” The detective says. “My apologies for making such a demand on your hospitality, especially in light of the… circumstances.”

The cat swings around from its place on the sofa back, yowling something accusatory.

Akechi coughs lightly, murmurs “I see”.

“Someone translate.” Sojiro orders.

“Morgana… does not feel comfortable with me under the same roof as Kurusu-san.” Akechi offers.

“He swore a little more, though.” Akira clarifies.

The little detective has just fairly spectacularly betrayed his shitbag of a father in the world of his subconscious, and then the father’s brain’s been hijacked by a pseudo-godly being that wants to kill him. Home… probably isn’t a safe place for him to go, huh.

“Your call.” He shrugs at Akira. “And the cat’s, I guess. I can cover him for a night at the nearest crappy motel if need be.”

Akira scratches his chin, shrugs. Kid looks beat. Sojiro suspects his decision-making faculties might have switched off by this point.

The cat nuzzles Akira’s shoulder, meowing something quiet.

“Thank you both, very much.”

And Sojiro’s pretty sure his own critical faculties have given up on the day too, because he finds the whole situation touching for a moment, that trust between the kid and the cat. He locks up and heads home before anything too stupid makes its way out of his mouth.

* * *

 

Akira does a decent impression of a gracious host until he can send Akechi to the tiny bathroom downstairs to wash, at which point it hits home how just ridiculous their lives have gotten and a kind of hysterical glee sets in and makes him giggle like a loon.

He’s just spent five minutes searching for a toothbrush for a guy who’d tried to kill him twice and that wasn’t even the weirdest thing that’d happened today.

He lets himself flop back from where he’s sat hunting through his still-not-unpacked boxes to lie on his back on the floor, an arm over his eyes, helpless in the face of the deep and utter absurdity that is his life.

“Is everything all right?”  
  
He tips his head to one side. Lavenza is half way up the stairs, looking around with interest at the attic space.

What a shame, it’s meant to be crazy women who live in attics, not delinquent teens. She’ll go away with completely the wrong cultural references; he’ll end up as a strange and confusing influence on a nice young woman.

Well, wait a minute, she’s 50% Caroline by volume. It’s probably best to reserve judgement on her niceness.

Akira shakes his head, pulls himself into a cross legged position facing her. Lavenza draws closer to the top of the stairs, looking around. Two steps from the top and her head’s more or less level with his.

“Everything’s pretty good actually. It’s just… been a long day.” He says.

“Trickster.” Lavenza says, tucking her hair back from her face. Those amber-yellow eyes feel like they’re looking right through him. “I wanted to apologise: we failed both you and the detective.”

When he didn’t speak, she continues.

“Caroline and Justine really did care for you and wish you well, but you were a playing piece in a rigged game, and they did not help you as they should have.

“Goro Akechi did not have even that dubious aid. He was granted the power to explore the Metaverse and placed in a situation that would awaken his persona he had nothing to guide him. His only goal was vengeance. We… did poorly by him, and by doing so poorly by him we set him against you.”

Akira nods.

She looks at him, serious, until he speaks: “What are you going to do now you know?”

“I’ll help my sisters fight.” She says, immediate. Then she smiles, mischievous in a way she must have learned from Elizabeth. “We are those who rule over power. Don’t underestimate us!”

Akira grins. He actually kind of does want to pick a fight with Margaret and Elizabeth, but that’s not because he thinks he can win so much as because he bets it’d be a really educational beat-down.

And actually, talking to her really does make him feel better. This whole week – ever since Futaba and Makoto travelled to the room and brought Margaret back – Akira’s felt trapped, not sure what it will mean for the team to have to this weird artefact of his unconscious mind dragged front and centre. That fear is gone now. The monster behind the curtains isn’t Akira himself, it’s an enemy, one who’s moved into the open. Now the thieves can see it, they can fight it.

“After that…” She folds her hands together, looks aside. “Margaret says that Elizabeth doubts the purpose of the Room, and that she left to find her own meaning in life. I’m not sure what I will do.”

There’s footsteps on the stairs behind her. Akechi.

Somehow, Lavenza not knowing how to move forward either puts him at ease. Akira, Akechi, Lavenza – there’s someone playing them, all of them, setting them against one another and giving them each a different part of the puzzle to solve.

But they’ve found it out now.

They’ll win together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... and scene.
> 
> .
> 
> The name is several dorky allusions at once, as is only appropriate:
> 
> 1\. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is a thing sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke once wrote.
> 
> 2\. In programming, 'deep magic' means making a completely mind-boggling leap out of left field, something that nobody following in your footsteps is going to be able to follow. Think this wiki article about how old-school shooter Quake III had such an obscure sneaky way to calculate how lighting should work that the original source code has a comment in just saying '// what the fuck', and people have now written papers on it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root
> 
> 3\. But also, the underlying concept of saying an algorithm or function works by 'magic' means it's not clear where it's getting all the information it needs to do its working. So how the Nav works in this interpretation (ie, it just goes and grabs the info from the collective human subconscious in the sea of souls) is "magic" in the hacker sense as well as the literal sense... XD
> 
> Thanks for reading, folks, and for sharing in my glee at Futaba and Sojiro and Elizabeth and everyone's various shenanigans <3


End file.
